uberschveinen

Just because he's a megalomaniac doesn't mean he's on an only-ever-do-bad policy. A competent ruthless overlord gives his positive-PR tasks to the do-gooders in his nation. Why give more work to those who'll go to any lengths? You'll never have enough of them that you can rely on, so don't waste their work on anything less than what they're willing to do. Give to good works to the do-gooders and not only do you keep them on-side but you keep the trustworthy ones in your organisation. Honest people with ambition are far too valuable a resource to drive them away in the name of LOLEVIL.

A talented ruthless overlord, of course, makes positive-PR tasks for the do-gooders. Then again, a competent ruler never has to hold power by force in the first place.

Even though they're not dissimilar from the existing weapons, the pistols from Equilibrium are almost a must given how much the set owes to that movie. Plus, they have the advantage of being iconic without being copyrighted.

If you're going to discuss the vagarities of moral challenges, you have to actually accept that your own particular brand of morality is not only not the only one to exist, but not even the automatically correct one.

Let's rephrase, using the key words of moral debate. You believe that ensuring the continued existence of humanity is the prime moral imperative.

Personal power is only relevant to the scale of crime. There is no level of personal power below which criminal activity is impossible, nor one above which it is inevitable. Irrelevant to the actual morality of the situation is the practical impossibility of ever applying this thought. It is not possible to prevent all crime through the detainment of specific subgroups of people and it is not possible to detain everyone.

Incidentally, using the word 'crime' at all here is a serious error. Crime as you understand it to be is not the same as crime as the citizens of Praetorian Earth understand it to be. Criminal activity is not defined by an absolute set of universal laws, but by individuals with power in concert with the geneal consensus of society. Genocide, one of the most grave criminal acts under our own legal systems, has at many times throughout history not only not been criminal but at times has been considered a moral imperative.

[wolfcastle]Dat's de joke.[/wolfcastle]


You're talking about a raging brawler powerset whose fundamentals are the complete abandonment of subtlety in favour of the immediate applkication of raw force beign set to an archetype whose sole defining trait is the use of subtle tactics. The only way to make this work is satirically.

There's that, but in this case there's also the magnificent accelerant of personal investment.

Humans in general have amazing abilities to build their own identities. Withotu ever realising what they're doing, people take everything they see and do, categorise it by how much of an impact it's had on their lives and ways of thinking, test it for how well it fits with everything else they see themselves as, and find a way to slot anything of real worth to themselves into their identity as a person. Every time you develop a talent better, find a new hobby, or see a book or movie or show that has a genuine effect on you, it becomes a very small part of what you are. All of these little things come together over time to make a person. A well-formed individual has a very solid base for their own identity, built on a level of self-knowledge and self-acceptance for stability, and with all kinds of life experiences to add weight. The things that make them can be knocked out by the vagarities of life, but it has no lasting impact on them at large; they simply abandon the failed part, find somethign new, and move on. Only the core is vulnerable, that self-awareness, and it takes a truly earthshaking personal revelation to do that damage.

Some people, though, do not have such well-formed self-identities. They don't have the self-awareness that builds a stable core, or the self-acceptance that protects it. Everything they are is built around things that they don't have total control over. They define themselves by cars, game,s books, disliek of a politician, or any number of things, just like anyone else. The difference is, that's all they can define themselves by. If you take out enough of those peripheral identity cues, the entire edifice is liable to collapse in on itself.

Luckily for them, the human mind is fantastically equipped for self-defense. When something they've invested themselves in is challenged, they will defend ferociously. Unlike the self-aware person, they can't afford to give ground on these matters. They will take any challenge to the mat, and only by the most skilled debate and persuasion can you change their opinion of one of these things. Most insecure people tend to end up with very difficult-to-challenge opinions, or at least those backed by a large consensus, because it makes them much mroe resilient to being challenged.

The danger is worse when peopel becoem overinvested in something. Because they have so little to define themselves by, they assign grossly disproportionate value to something that didn't actually have that great an effect on them. To sustain this, they need to believe that what they have taken onto themselves is considerably better than it actually is. While this is sustainable in private, in reality, it will soon be challenged. The difference is that it doesn't even take a deliberate point to challenge these pieces of themselves. These are the people who go beyond defending a thing, but react to any failure to acknowledge the thing as perfect as though it was a direct personal attack because, to them, it is. They are particularly rabid and fervent because they cannot overcome a challenging point with legitimate arguments, instead, they have to resort to attacks on the legitimacy of the debate, sheer force of numbers, circular arguments, and the agumentative equivalents of LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. They see their position, partially delusional though it is perfectly legitimate. They don't allow themselves to see the extremes to which they've taken things, because that in itself challenges their self-identity.

Though these people are relatively rare, they are not rarely seen. They are extremely loud for their numbers, purely because they cannot allow a challenging point to go unattacked, or withdraw from an argument once started. In fact, those who have been doing it from some time unconsciously try to make the argument as idiotic as possible, knowing it often drives the other side away. They are also a magnificent target for trolls, because they can't let even the most obvious bait go.

They're easy to spot, at least. To them, nothing is so dangerous as a valid argument phrased politely.

I had a story, but I forgot it in the time between when this was a short comment and when it turned into a small thesis.