Code Geass: Black Knight/White Knight

[Dante K]

from post # 24, Mecha Ethics: Tens or hundreds or thousands of Britannian soldiers obeyed Euphemia's orders to kill Japanese at the Fuji stadium. Unless you have proof that Lelouch knew that Euphemia was the last Britannian left at Fuji then he should have captured her and used her as a hostage to stop the massacre instead of killing her.

Armchair general; this reminds me of a case when a police officer in Spain, or maybe it was Portugal, was in a hearing before judges because when he was off-duty he had killed an armed, drugged-up murderer in the street by shooting him from behind. One of the judges asked if he couldn't just sneak up and knock out the man. The police officer said that's what people imagine when they have been watching too much TV.

[kimi no kioku]

Everyone does evil deeds in their lives. When they are kids if nothing else, because then they have less self-restraint and will take pleasure in causing harm to others, at least a few times. Tearing wings off ladybugs for example, to take pleasure in hurting someone - even if a small act, it is evil. So should such people be hated and despised always?

I think a person who is overall good should not be hated. A person may be wrong about what is good to do, but that only makes him stupid or misinformed or obstinate, not evil. Two opponents in the same war can both be good - maybe one of them is simply wrong, or they both are.

Heck, I am sure that in many wars there have been people looking at the other side and seeing they have more in common with the best people there, than with some of the rabble on their own side.

Exactly. Too bad she doesn't understand.

[proEuphie]

Armchair general; this reminds me of a case when a police officer in Spain, or maybe it was Portugal, was in a hearing before judges because when he was off-duty he had killed an armed, drugged-up murderer in the street by shooting him from behind. One of the judges asked if he couldn't just sneak up and knock out the man. The police officer said that's what people imagine when they have been watching too much TV.

What makes you think that it would have been even the least bit difficult for Lelouch to capture Euphemia? Lelouch sliced her mecha apart with that weird finger-thread weapon, and Euphemia crawled out the wreckage and then the situation was just one unarmed girl against two giant war robots. Looking down on her from thirty or so feet up Lelouch must have known that he had all the choices and he was not forced by circumstances to chose any one course of action.

[proEuphie]

Everyone does evil deeds in their lives. When they are kids if nothing else, because then they have less self-restraint and will take pleasure in causing harm to others, at least a few times. Tearing wings off ladybugs for example, to take pleasure in hurting someone - even if a small act, it is evil. So should such people be hated and despised always?

Never write that "everyone" does something. With billions of humans alive today, it is almost certain that not "everyone" does anything that you could possibly claim that "everyone" does. I am constantly amazed at how different from me other people are.

I never pulled the wings off of any insect. I can get along with most insects all right -- I shared a bedroom with a wasp one summer with no problems -- but I find the idea of touching insects disgusting. So even if I was mean I wouldn't force myself to tear a bug apart just to be cruel.

I don't remember doing things just to be mean or to feel powerful from humiliating and hurting other people or creatures. I can't understand the aggressive cruelty of bullies.

When I entered junior High school at the age of twelve most of my classmates started to bully me and about ten percent of all the kids in our class. Fortunately I am a hermit and don't care about my social position so I simply ignored the bullying when it was not happening, having more interesting things to think about. I can never claim, of course, that I never had wild revenge fantasies about using fiendish tortures on my classmates.

But I did not think that my classmates deserved to die for their evil bullying. And I never decided that people become too evil to live at the age of twelve. Whenever I read about one or more historical kids twelve years old or older being killed, or saw fictional kids twelve years old or older killed in movies or tv shows, I never thought: "Good! There goes another evil teenager getting what he deserves."

Instead I gave the historical or fictional kid the benefit of the doubt and supposed that he was one of the relatively few good and nice teenagers and was angry at the historical or fictional character who killed him. Or, assuming that he might be an evil bully, I never considered that being a bully was evil enough to make him deserve to die or for me to enjoy his death.

You do have a point. I was vague in my definitions. Minor evil does not make a person deserve to die (or else half the teenagers and adults in the world should be killed) and is not enough for me to desire that an audience hate a fictional character.

From now on I will try to write that anyone who commits a single MAJOR evil deed, involving KILLING at least one person unnecessarily, counts as an evil person that nobody should like. Even doing infinite good in the future cannot undo killing even one person unnecessarily, nor make such a killer a good person worth caring about.

I think a person who is overall good should not be hated. A person may be wrong about what is good to do, but that only makes him stupid or misinformed or obstinate, not evil. Two opponents in the same war can both be good - maybe one of them is simply wrong, or they both are.

Of course you would like to think that being mostly good would be good enough to make you a good person. Of course you want to believe that you should not be despised if you managed to be at least 51% or 76% good.

But remember that Churchill was mostly good, but he let the RAF bomb German cities and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians in terror bombings which have never been proven to have been vital to saving Britain from Nazi conquest or ending the war as fast as possible. Targeting vital structures such as railroad bridges and power plants and dams might have worked at least as well.

And Truman was mostly good but he permitted massive conventional air raids on Japanese cities and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with no clear proof that they were necessary.

Churchill and Truman were mostly good, but they were also mass murderers who rank among the twenty five most evil warlords in history, in spite all the competition for places on that list. So saying that being mostly good is good enough doesn't convince me.

wrong[/I] about what is good to do, but that only makes him stupid or misinformed or obstinate, not evil. Two opponents in the same war can both be good - maybe one of them is simply wrong, or they both are.
Heck, I am sure that in many wars there have been people looking at the other side and seeing they have more in common with the best people there, than with some of the rabble on their own side.

You say that being misinformed about what is right and wrong is not enough to make a person evil. Then what is enough to make a person evil? All the most evil forces in history, The Nazis, the Communists, the Mongol hordes, the Imperial Japanese army, the Assyrians, etc., etc., etc., all believed that they were fighting for good. They believed that part or all of the world, or at least their own peoples, would benefit greatly from achieving their goals, and so it did not matter how many people they killed achieving those goals. They believed their goals were infinitely good and therefore they would be doing good if they killed anything less than an infinite number of people while striving for their goals. And thus they did not care how many people they killed or try to reduce their killing rate.

The main defense against there being more such misinformed people in the future is 1) insisting that everyone think clearly and logically about their goals and examine them for ethical and factual flaws before starting to pursue them, and 2) insist that everyone pursue their goals, no matter how just, noble, holy, and vital they believe those goals are, with constant care to reduce killing to the absolute minimum necessary to achieve those goals.

For example, if the Nazis had not been more afraid of thinking clearly about ethical issues and the facts than they were of dying in battle, they might have realized that the Jews were not a terrible, demonic plague upon humanity and that exterminating the Jews was not necessary and was a waste of perfectly useful people.

And if the Nazis had believed in pursuing every goal, not matter how great and good it seemed to them, in the most humane and gentle way possible (which would be highly unNazi-like, of course), they would have simple rounded up all the Jews, sterilized them, and kept them in captivity for the rest of their lives, preventing them from doing any imaginary "Jewish Evil" to anyone. The last Jewish babies captured by the Nazis in the 1940s would die of old age in the 2050s (unless methods of major life extensions were invented first).

So people who defend Lelouch or Celestial Being for killing people unnecessarily on the grounds that they did more good than evil overall are denying the importance of one of the two main intellectual, spiritual, and ideological defenses against the possibility that in the future more deluded people will slaughter more thousands or millions of people unnecessarily.

The belief that anyone who kills even one person unnecessarily while pursuing even the most good and noble goal imaginable is too evil and disgusting to be good or to be liked is an idea that should be spread and accepted as widely as possible in an attempt to prevent any repetition of the horrors of the past, instead of being scoffed at because it makes the protagonist of a tv show you have enjoyed seem evil.

[Rolo Vi Britannia]

How many times do I have to tell you, you shouldn't post on someone else's thread.

[wolfgirl90]

Yeah, I was going to respond to proEuphie but decided against it; I haven't been on this thread in a long time.

ProEuphie, take it somewhere else.

[Gero50]

Well I do not know much about this series but I'm going with the Black Knight because I tend to side with the dark side if given the choice.

[blackrosetwilight]

Well I do not know much about this series but I'm going with the Black Knight because I tend to side with the dark side if given the choice.

lol they werent evil despite the name... except in proEuphy's case

[Aozora*Pen]

Yeah, I was going to respond to proEuphie but decided against it; I haven't been on this thread in a long time.

ProEuphie, take it somewhere else.

...Looks like she took your advice/words seriously. Multi-dimensional troll now?

[YuriEcchiGirl]

Lelouch all the way! He is totally the best CG knight! ^^

[yakman1692]

I'm a Lelouch supporter. I can understand the whole changing a system from the inside, but one person, especially someone who is discriminated against, it is very difficult to do, especially in something as corrupt as the Britannian government. Lelouch knew that you had to fight against them and overthrow them if you wanted results. Plus, Lelouch was overall more capable. Suzaku was a good pilot, but not much else.

[YuriEcchiGirl]

He's also super hot aswell, for an anime character, hee hee! ^^

[under the rain]

Well... wasn't Suzaku killing Lelouch part of Lelouch's plan? Why exactly would one pissed off at him for that? It's probably the best thing he's done in the entire series.

For the most part, I'd side with Lelouch. Also, proEuphie, can it. I've already shown how ridiculous your theories about Lelouch are. Nobody cares about your obvious histrionic disorder, the things you think you know about history, your opinions on the moral value of fictional characters that are for the most part completely unfounded, and Gundam 00 in the contest of a Code Geass discussion.

[YuriEcchiGirl]

Lelouch should so have his own movie or series, lol! ^^

[under the rain]

Lelouch should so have his own movie or series, lol! ^^

He... He kinda does. That's what Code Geass is...

[YuriEcchiGirl]

Lol! My bad then! I also mean just a whole movie all to himself aswell ^^

[+Namiko+]

A NOTHER year later and this bull crap is STILL going ON?!

Why did I make this thread?
Why?

I think proEuphie has literally WRITTEN THE BOOK on Lelouche's FICTIONAL evil.

I know even posting this now is a mistake, but I just can't keep my shock bottled up.