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smash_logs2014-05-21 11:50 am
will_be_god) wrote in smash_logs2014-05-21 11:50 am
Entry tags:
Ethics class final! XY infiltrates the classroom!
Who: Cyrus, students
What: Ethics final!
Where: The usual classroom
When: Monday, 1 pm
Warnings: Incredibly frustrating essays.
When the students arrive for their final, Cyrus is, as usual, already there. The question on the board, in his usual precise handwriting, is deceptively simple.
The tale of the ancient king
According to legend, a war once consumed several faraway regions. The king of one region sent his Pokémon to battle, where it was killed. Out of grief, he summoned a powerful force to destroy the battlefield, killing thousands of people and Pokémon.
You will write a minimum of five pages on this subject, covering the following points: Are the deaths of thousands justified to stop a war that would kill far more? Does his motivation of grief justify his actions? Without that motivation, would your views on his actions change? Either way, why? What would you do if the situation arose under your power? Explain your actions.
You have until 3 pm.
What: Ethics final!
Where: The usual classroom
When: Monday, 1 pm
Warnings: Incredibly frustrating essays.
When the students arrive for their final, Cyrus is, as usual, already there. The question on the board, in his usual precise handwriting, is deceptively simple.
According to legend, a war once consumed several faraway regions. The king of one region sent his Pokémon to battle, where it was killed. Out of grief, he summoned a powerful force to destroy the battlefield, killing thousands of people and Pokémon.
You will write a minimum of five pages on this subject, covering the following points: Are the deaths of thousands justified to stop a war that would kill far more? Does his motivation of grief justify his actions? Without that motivation, would your views on his actions change? Either way, why? What would you do if the situation arose under your power? Explain your actions.
You have until 3 pm.
AIN'T NO WAY I'M ACTUALLY WRITING AN ESSAY but
As passionate as he is about all this, for a personal essay, he keeps it sounding relatively cold and analytical. The most of his heart he lets reflect in it is that he's not naive enough to believe there is any one option that everyone will agree with, it has to be one with no room for regret. Something about how in an ideal world, peace could be achieved in that war without lives lost, but the world is cruel and sacrifices need to be made. But they should be made with the greater good in mind, not senselessly based on personal feelings.
(He chooses not to write about the time he would have readily sacrificed all the wrong lives to protect the one he loved most, or about the life he did vote to sacrifice for the sake of the 'greater good.')
Anyway, look, it's an essay that is simple and to the point but still manages to span 8 pages. He finishes with ten minutes to spare, and after he turns his paper over he kind of
dozes off a little
whoops. Finals Season is rough, okay. At least he doesn't snore.]
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Was this war so terrible that people had to send their pokemon to fight? Pulse never had a pokemon, but he understood that the bond between a pokemon and it's trainer was something of great significance, something that people often built their whole lives around. I've never experienced that kind of a bond, so I wouldn't know; if I had a pokemon, I would never put it in a situation where it could be killed.
But what if instead of a pokemon, it was someone like Riche? She was his partner all throughout his battle against Galaxy Gang, and remained so today, always checking in on him and letting him know how things are back in Tokyo. Back when she had installed herself inside his wrist computer, her fate and Pulse's were essentially intertwined; if something were to happen and Pulse were killed, Riche would have died as a result. The main reason they were even able to survive this conflict was because of how well they worked together, how well they were able to sync with one another. Pulse wondered if the bond between a pokemon and its trainer was anything like the bond he had with Riche. Even if that were so, I wouldn't willingly allow Riche to die for me... I would rather die myself, if I had the choice. But then, I know Riche would feel the same way... I wonder if that's the reason why the man's pokemon chose to fight in the war, because the pokemon knew that the man would have done the same, if he could...
...But if he could summon such a force, one strong enough to level an entire area, then what was the purpose of sending his pokemon to fight? And besides that... What was this war even about? Was he the only one with this kind of power? What kind of force was he fighting against?
The part about the king having the power to destroy on such a massive scale, and using it out of grief, really resonated with Pulse. He knew what it was like to have that kind of power, as well as to become so overwhelmed with anger and hurt that he didn't care about the consequences of using that power, so long as those who brought him to that state were eliminated. "Deleted", he muttered to himself.
But what wasn't what he was about. He had made that decision, back when his da--when Waruyama tried to tell him such. He couldn't help that humans would still fear him, that there would always be evil in the world; none of that justified death and destruction, nor the elimination of humankind. It wasn't his station to call them obsolete. Riche wouldn't have wanted it that way, either.
He picked up his pencil, and his hand flew over the paper like an automated printer stylus, even keeping within the margins. He paused at the end of the first page, wondering for a moment if he were meant to double-space, or write on the back of the paper as well. Acknowledging that neither was mentioned in the instructions, he pulled out a clean sheet of paper, and continued on that in the same format as before. In the end, he had exactly five pages written.
Turning it in, he went back and sat at his desk, looking around, realizing that there was no mention made of whether or not he was allowed to leave after finishing the assignment.
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No, instead the better option would have been not to send his Pokémon into a war. It would have been to try and be friendly with the opposing side. What was the war even about anyway? Because that made a difference! If the war was over something dumb, and it seems like most wars are over something dumb, then they should have just figured out a better solution than killing things in a dumb war. Why not have a Pokémon battle instead? Red caused Team Rocket to disband by beating Giovanni in a Pokémon battle. That would have been a way better idea. Show your enemy the strength of your resolve, the power of your spirit and the purity of your intent through battle! Get to know and understand one another's feelings! Become rivals, or better yet become friends!
In short, killing thousands of people is terrible, even if you've fallen into the deepest kind of grief. It isn't justifiable to do that even if it's going to stop the war. There's no justification for that kind of killing. You should stop wars before they start by finding common ground! Even if that common ground is just a shared love for Pokémon. If he were in that King's position, he would have tried diplomacy first and force only as a second option but he would have done his best to keep it non-lethal by insisting on standard Pokémon League Battle guidelines. That kind of fighting brings understanding, not death. He would want to make a friend and ally out of the other region and that way they could both prosper!
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Regardless of either of these perceivable attitudes - seemingly eager to learn more about the subject versus treating it like it didn't involve him or that it was just something he could mock - Henry hasn't done well in this class. At least, in the sense of grasping what it means to be ethical, considerate, and humane. With that in mind, Henry seemed bored at the paper subject. For a while, he lounged in his chair mostly without disruption save the occasional restless shifting his his chair or balancing his pencil by the eraser on his index finger until he succeeded. Just before Cyrus or any of his peers could get impatient with him and get after him, he finally put pencil to paper and started writing.
His paper outlined his thoughts in a tone unlike his light-hearted manner of speaking. His words seemed like they were pulled from the mind of a disturbed serial killer with no remorse, or something in that vein. It was just off, the way he wrote about it so directly.
The dark mage wrote that it didn't matter whether the war was stopped or not, or how many deaths there were. War killed people, and war came out of conflict between two or more parties. All deaths were justifiable in war because there were people of such power involved that their goals apparently meant much more than the lives of a few thousand creatures. Overall, Henry seemed to believe that the amount of deaths meant nothing, and that people would continue to be killed everywhere. In response to the king's motivation, Henry wrote that grief and revenge was as good of a reason as any. And even without his personal feelings, what he did was fundamentally the same thing: the king held the lives of thousands in his hand and destroyed them anyway. His personal feelings didn't change anything to Henry, and Henry's overall thoughts on the deaths of thousands exacted by the king was that they didn't matter.
If the situation were under his jurisdiction, Henry wrote that people would still die because he liked war. War was fun when it happened. Henry wrote that if another kingdom had a problem with him (as a king) and instigated war, he'd be fine with it and he'd let it happen for as long as it needed. If somebody he cared about was killed in the war, he would keep doing what he was doing because people died - even people he cared about. Whether they died in the midst of war or in their elderly years didn't make a difference. Death didn't appear to bother Henry very much, judging by his paper. He wrote about it dismissively, like it was part of the inevitable. Humans were disposable. Anything that had life would just die: it didn't matter when.
Henry's paper was abruptly finished with little conclusion and lacked much formal structure, but it answered the questions. He didn't inject any personal experiences in his paper, although he had them in mind while writing it. His paper just nearly met the length requirement. He finished with good timing and spent the last twenty minutes kicking his feet in his chair some more and looking out the window.
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