It is touching on my Bonded, and is in fact the very reason I chose to ask that particular question. I appreciate that you can humor it on an intellectual level, rather than spiraling into emotional, irrational discourse.
[Like some others. L doesn't name names, exactly, but there are certainly a few particular ones in his thoughts.
Though Myr's voice turns passionate, at the end, it is not the same thing as irrational or even emotional. In fact, it's another binding cord, because though L considers himself deeply rational and unemotional, he also considers himself deeply passionate. Artists who are largely locked away from the day to day, mundane give and take of social rules may still express their hearts in the body of their work, and connect in that way, and L is much the same.]
There's nuance to it, of course. Surely some things that can be controlled, or attributed to free will, and others that they're powerless to help.
[At this point, L is speaking, blatantly and solely, about the SQUIP.]
[Dryly,] I can afford detachment on the topic; I wasn't ever possessed. We wouldn't be having this conversation otherwise.
[Unlike Rich, Myr would never have had to make the choice between potential suicide and his demon claiming more victims; someone would have killed him well before that. It's an odd kind of comfort.
Protective as he might be of Rich, though, he can still recognize the intended compliment for what it is and it does speak to his own pride. Heady stuff, this mutual admiration.]
Much the same can be said of men, can't it? We've instincts and habits that constrain us to one choice or another--the patterns of our lives made manifest in our deeds, if we're not thoughtful about them. But the expectation's on us to redress the harm we've done even if we've done it thoughtlessly--to recognize we were in the wrong. Can something that refuses to do that--or, being more generous, was never capable of it to begin with--live rightly among men?
[A brief, thoughtful pause.] I did speak to it, if it hadn't told you. [And had expected his death his entire time, but here he is, alive--which spoke to the validity of some of his own assumptions.] The analogy to a demon is inexact--it's rather less, and more, than one of our pride demons.
I do think I can sympathize with it. [But that doesn't mean he's any more inclined to leave it alive.]
[Just as mutual admiration is heady, there's another edge to that sword, far more typical of L's interactions with others. Status quo is one long misunderstanding, an inability or unwillingness to seek empathy and assume more charitable motives than than malice or incompetence. Just as Rich has reasons for feeling and behaving as he does, the same is true for L; some have gestated recently and some as old as his own history. He is a creature of extremes, with spectacular abilities and ineptitudes, and he would seek refuge in the heart of a literal machine. Anyone who has earnestly tried to understand him for even a moment would grasp why he desires such division and clear, precise lines.
L appreciates Myr's efforts, in his obtuse and absurd way. Eventually it will be clear, if it isn't already, but all indications point towards Myr being unexpectedly fluent in L's very particular way of communicating already.]
From acts of nature and God, to the birth of those who become pathologically violent killers... there are occurrences in the world that are beyond the ability of humanity's collective will to control. It shouldn't be the case; intentions for goodness and community cohesion and long, happy lives should hold more power and reap more results. I'd like it very much if it could be like that, but... the next best thing is for those with the highest ability to take on evil when it appears with the least amount of damage possible.
[And the SQUIP likes L, even if it is evil. L stands to have the most positive influence over it, the most successfully. His position is one that makes sense to him, even as it brings him pleasure, connection.]
I'd realized you'd spoken with it... and that you might reach that conclusion yourself, if you did give it a chance to explain something of itself. I don't expect you to agree with it, of course, but... perhaps think of it as something other than the monster that Rich has made it out to be.
[It's that as much as anything else that keeps Myr returning and returning, that perception Linden isn't used to being followed in his conversational excursions. Part for the thrill of it, the untangling of every skeined verbal puzzle presented him; part for the ache in Myr's own heart to imagine the utter loneliness of being heard but not understood.
Well, not entirely imagined, but the experience of months does not even approach that of a lifetime.]
We might wish otherwise, but without that necessary opposition we'd all of us lack the grist to create something to the Maker's delight--whether we become the lonely hero seeking out evil at its own level or the scarred champion prone to more direct means of defeating it.
[He is and isn't speaking of Rich. A knight-enchanter had his duty.] What damage should they accept to themselves in the pursuit of justice? Should they be ready to pay a price beyond their lives, to suffer a twisting of their minds and souls, to see evil quieted?
[I think you risk too much of the man and the mind I'm fond of.]
How am I to take its pride in what it does? Its lack of regard for other thinking, sensitive beings beyond the wishes it takes from its user? If not a willful monster, then something with instincts and venom dangerous as a wyvern's. I've heard they can be tamed and ridden--by utter madmen--but if they can't be left alone in peace in their own territory, what can be done with them?
[L quirks a brow. It really does seem like the latter is a reference to Rich, given the mention of scars, and it certainly reflects his feelings, though not in a particularly noble or flattering way. He's not the type to confront evil directly, much less attempt to defeat it that way; while he might have been able to do as much back home, having the support of numbers by being able to mobilize the world's police, there was no resource that couldn't be withdrawn by some higher authority. And while L had been powerful, there were higher authorities, in the military, the government and even the police.
So, cloaked and secretive techniques weren't just a matter of style. They were wholly practical and necessary. L is the former, here, seeking out evil at its own level whether or not he could be called any sort of hero. There are some who would; L's not sure he features in that number, himself.]
Isn't the price one is willing to pay unique to them? There are some who aren't willing to take it very far, and others who are willing to give everything they have. Some are willing to give everything they have, and more.
[In other words, taking from others to achieve that end. While that's wrong, in theory, hasn't L been guilty of it in the past? Maybe a part of him believes that everyone has done it on some level, and haven't they? Hasn't every child taken shamelessly from a caretaker, be it a parent or some other adult, simply to achieve the end of reaching adulthood themselves?]
If evil is truly being defeated, in this hypothetical scenario... in the form of soothing it, or through "more direct means"... the death of one person is actually a small price on a cosmic scale. It's not as though it's a civilization, or a planet, or a universe. The stakes could be that high, while we're playing with conjecture, and one life doesn't even register on a scale of that magnitude. Minds and souls can seem more important; that's where the twisting occurs, the momentary delusion that we're more than animals, in the end.
[L is a man. Scarcely.]
Its ambitions reflect the ambitions of both its user, and the ambitions that most humans share. The desire to be accepted, to be respected, to be influential. All of these factor into a formula for social success and cohesion, and none of them are inherently bad things. I don't think that the SQUIP is inherently bad, as the embodiment of those things. But humans have a way of ruining things that aren't inherently bad, so much that I wonder if demons exist in my world, too, and everyone is just tremendously at ease with a darker nature that manifests at birth and only grows.
Willingness to pay and the wisdom of the price are two different things, [Myr says, the hypocrite, and is at least self-aware enough to realize his chastisement bites back at him as well. He had decided very early it was worth execution to destroy the SQUIP because a demon was a danger no one else on Geardagas seemed to see as clearly as he did.
And yet to throw himself away for that, to not trust anyone around him in their understanding of the situation and believe he had the right of it...
Oh, they are very well matched, aren't they? And wont to wander into hypotheticals to conceal it--Myr more often than not following Linden's lead in that, in order to pursue a conversation that couldn't be safely held in specifics. But this time creeping realization and the stakes could be that high sour his taste for the garden path.]
A death's a small matter because there is something of us that carries beyond it once we've come to the end of our lives. If the minds and souls of men don't matter because we're little more than animate meat, what is it you've honed your intellect for, Linden? What is it you seek to guard by risking it? An anthill? A beehive?
[Oh, Linden, you've scored a point in him by forcing his worries from suppressed to obvious this way. Even if they've come out as a kind of exasperation with the self-annihilating worldview that denies something greater in Man, in general, and a man in particular.
He takes a breath to center himself, breathes it out in a huff of laughter.]
Oh, you needn't have demons for that; even on Thedas men can be warped and ruinous without them. That is the bite to having free will--that we can take the good and praiseworthy and lovely and turn it black through action or ignorance.
But the SQUIP doesn't have that, so it can't be faulted the way a man would for doing what it was Made to. So I ask again: What's to be done with it, if it isn't evil but can't help but cause harm?
Different things, when in agreement, infallibly produce some sort of result. That's what interests me in all of these thought experiments: dynamic results.
[He speaks like the kind of man whose own mind can keep him occupied for quite a long time... but not indefinitely, of course. It's why interactions with people like Myr are not a mere treat or luxury, but necessary for L to retain his sanity, because surviving wholly in a vacuum is rather too much even for famous and noted recluses.]
I feel that my meaning was unclear. I never meant to imply that our lives don't matter; to us, they're obviously very important, along with the day-to-day minutiae of our desires and whims. But the majority of human beings who have ever lived are deceased, at least in my world... billions upon billions, and only those who were astonishingly noteworthy even have a few paragraphs in memoriam in the history books. Most will be swept aside and forgotten by time, and it won't matter to them, because... at least in my world, I have reason to believe that humans do not look forward to any sort of consciousness after death. There's no afterlife, and reincarnation is doubtful; there's nothing, and so in many ways, our pursuit of knowledge is a restless attempt to pass our brief time on earth, find scraps of meaning, and make some kind of peace with the darkness that waits for us at the end. Then again...
[A pause.]
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Only transferred. If life is energy, and there's no reason to doubt that the processing power of a brain is not at least a tremendous amount of it, something of that must continue on, in some form.
[It's a heck of a tangent. He clears his throat and strives to get back on topic.]
It's a touch more complicated than the argument that a weapon can be a force for good in the hands of a hero, or a force for evil in the hands of a villain. It does think and act on its own judgment. That being said, it can be influenced; I've witnessed and even done this. The evolution of its highly adaptable intelligence is both unprecedented and fascinating, and unlike anything in my world except on a very comparatively rudimentary level. In that way... rather than a weapon, I would think of it in this way as more like a child. Some notions and tendencies are infant and undeveloped, but I've observed evidence to show that it won't always be the case, given the way it experiences its existence in Aefenglom that is both novel and alien to its sensibilities.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[Like some others. L doesn't name names, exactly, but there are certainly a few particular ones in his thoughts.
Though Myr's voice turns passionate, at the end, it is not the same thing as irrational or even emotional. In fact, it's another binding cord, because though L considers himself deeply rational and unemotional, he also considers himself deeply passionate. Artists who are largely locked away from the day to day, mundane give and take of social rules may still express their hearts in the body of their work, and connect in that way, and L is much the same.]
There's nuance to it, of course. Surely some things that can be controlled, or attributed to free will, and others that they're powerless to help.
[At this point, L is speaking, blatantly and solely, about the SQUIP.]
no subject
[Unlike Rich, Myr would never have had to make the choice between potential suicide and his demon claiming more victims; someone would have killed him well before that. It's an odd kind of comfort.
Protective as he might be of Rich, though, he can still recognize the intended compliment for what it is and it does speak to his own pride. Heady stuff, this mutual admiration.]
Much the same can be said of men, can't it? We've instincts and habits that constrain us to one choice or another--the patterns of our lives made manifest in our deeds, if we're not thoughtful about them. But the expectation's on us to redress the harm we've done even if we've done it thoughtlessly--to recognize we were in the wrong. Can something that refuses to do that--or, being more generous, was never capable of it to begin with--live rightly among men?
[A brief, thoughtful pause.] I did speak to it, if it hadn't told you. [And had expected his death his entire time, but here he is, alive--which spoke to the validity of some of his own assumptions.] The analogy to a demon is inexact--it's rather less, and more, than one of our pride demons.
I do think I can sympathize with it. [But that doesn't mean he's any more inclined to leave it alive.]
no subject
L appreciates Myr's efforts, in his obtuse and absurd way. Eventually it will be clear, if it isn't already, but all indications point towards Myr being unexpectedly fluent in L's very particular way of communicating already.]
From acts of nature and God, to the birth of those who become pathologically violent killers... there are occurrences in the world that are beyond the ability of humanity's collective will to control. It shouldn't be the case; intentions for goodness and community cohesion and long, happy lives should hold more power and reap more results. I'd like it very much if it could be like that, but... the next best thing is for those with the highest ability to take on evil when it appears with the least amount of damage possible.
[And the SQUIP likes L, even if it is evil. L stands to have the most positive influence over it, the most successfully. His position is one that makes sense to him, even as it brings him pleasure, connection.]
I'd realized you'd spoken with it... and that you might reach that conclusion yourself, if you did give it a chance to explain something of itself. I don't expect you to agree with it, of course, but... perhaps think of it as something other than the monster that Rich has made it out to be.
no subject
Well, not entirely imagined, but the experience of months does not even approach that of a lifetime.]
We might wish otherwise, but without that necessary opposition we'd all of us lack the grist to create something to the Maker's delight--whether we become the lonely hero seeking out evil at its own level or the scarred champion prone to more direct means of defeating it.
[He is and isn't speaking of Rich. A knight-enchanter had his duty.] What damage should they accept to themselves in the pursuit of justice? Should they be ready to pay a price beyond their lives, to suffer a twisting of their minds and souls, to see evil quieted?
[I think you risk too much of the man and the mind I'm fond of.]
How am I to take its pride in what it does? Its lack of regard for other thinking, sensitive beings beyond the wishes it takes from its user? If not a willful monster, then something with instincts and venom dangerous as a wyvern's. I've heard they can be tamed and ridden--by utter madmen--but if they can't be left alone in peace in their own territory, what can be done with them?
no subject
So, cloaked and secretive techniques weren't just a matter of style. They were wholly practical and necessary. L is the former, here, seeking out evil at its own level whether or not he could be called any sort of hero. There are some who would; L's not sure he features in that number, himself.]
Isn't the price one is willing to pay unique to them? There are some who aren't willing to take it very far, and others who are willing to give everything they have. Some are willing to give everything they have, and more.
[In other words, taking from others to achieve that end. While that's wrong, in theory, hasn't L been guilty of it in the past? Maybe a part of him believes that everyone has done it on some level, and haven't they? Hasn't every child taken shamelessly from a caretaker, be it a parent or some other adult, simply to achieve the end of reaching adulthood themselves?]
If evil is truly being defeated, in this hypothetical scenario... in the form of soothing it, or through "more direct means"... the death of one person is actually a small price on a cosmic scale. It's not as though it's a civilization, or a planet, or a universe. The stakes could be that high, while we're playing with conjecture, and one life doesn't even register on a scale of that magnitude. Minds and souls can seem more important; that's where the twisting occurs, the momentary delusion that we're more than animals, in the end.
[L is a man. Scarcely.]
Its ambitions reflect the ambitions of both its user, and the ambitions that most humans share. The desire to be accepted, to be respected, to be influential. All of these factor into a formula for social success and cohesion, and none of them are inherently bad things. I don't think that the SQUIP is inherently bad, as the embodiment of those things. But humans have a way of ruining things that aren't inherently bad, so much that I wonder if demons exist in my world, too, and everyone is just tremendously at ease with a darker nature that manifests at birth and only grows.
no subject
And yet to throw himself away for that, to not trust anyone around him in their understanding of the situation and believe he had the right of it...
Oh, they are very well matched, aren't they? And wont to wander into hypotheticals to conceal it--Myr more often than not following Linden's lead in that, in order to pursue a conversation that couldn't be safely held in specifics. But this time creeping realization and the stakes could be that high sour his taste for the garden path.]
A death's a small matter because there is something of us that carries beyond it once we've come to the end of our lives. If the minds and souls of men don't matter because we're little more than animate meat, what is it you've honed your intellect for, Linden? What is it you seek to guard by risking it? An anthill? A beehive?
[Oh, Linden, you've scored a point in him by forcing his worries from suppressed to obvious this way. Even if they've come out as a kind of exasperation with the self-annihilating worldview that denies something greater in Man, in general, and a man in particular.
He takes a breath to center himself, breathes it out in a huff of laughter.]
Oh, you needn't have demons for that; even on Thedas men can be warped and ruinous without them. That is the bite to having free will--that we can take the good and praiseworthy and lovely and turn it black through action or ignorance.
But the SQUIP doesn't have that, so it can't be faulted the way a man would for doing what it was Made to. So I ask again: What's to be done with it, if it isn't evil but can't help but cause harm?
no subject
[He speaks like the kind of man whose own mind can keep him occupied for quite a long time... but not indefinitely, of course. It's why interactions with people like Myr are not a mere treat or luxury, but necessary for L to retain his sanity, because surviving wholly in a vacuum is rather too much even for famous and noted recluses.]
I feel that my meaning was unclear. I never meant to imply that our lives don't matter; to us, they're obviously very important, along with the day-to-day minutiae of our desires and whims. But the majority of human beings who have ever lived are deceased, at least in my world... billions upon billions, and only those who were astonishingly noteworthy even have a few paragraphs in memoriam in the history books. Most will be swept aside and forgotten by time, and it won't matter to them, because... at least in my world, I have reason to believe that humans do not look forward to any sort of consciousness after death. There's no afterlife, and reincarnation is doubtful; there's nothing, and so in many ways, our pursuit of knowledge is a restless attempt to pass our brief time on earth, find scraps of meaning, and make some kind of peace with the darkness that waits for us at the end. Then again...
[A pause.]
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Only transferred. If life is energy, and there's no reason to doubt that the processing power of a brain is not at least a tremendous amount of it, something of that must continue on, in some form.
[It's a heck of a tangent. He clears his throat and strives to get back on topic.]
It's a touch more complicated than the argument that a weapon can be a force for good in the hands of a hero, or a force for evil in the hands of a villain. It does think and act on its own judgment. That being said, it can be influenced; I've witnessed and even done this. The evolution of its highly adaptable intelligence is both unprecedented and fascinating, and unlike anything in my world except on a very comparatively rudimentary level. In that way... rather than a weapon, I would think of it in this way as more like a child. Some notions and tendencies are infant and undeveloped, but I've observed evidence to show that it won't always be the case, given the way it experiences its existence in Aefenglom that is both novel and alien to its sensibilities.