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Shards and their morality.


Charononus

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So Ruin and Preservation are the shards that we know best.  We've seen others in some other novels but we I think have the best insight into these two so far.

 

Anyways it seems to me that shards pretty much will always twist their vessels into immorality if they are a single shard.  Fuzz after all was blissfully happy about the success of the Lord Ruler because he was unchanging.  Ruin would be considered a need process in moderation but once again became evil because of taking things too far.

It seems to me that every shardworld has had problems based on the intent of that shard being magnified too much.

 

Warbreaker spoilers

Endowment -- look at the social problems from people endowing their breath to one another.  It's created religious tensions that will likely lead to war eventually no matter what.  

 

Stormlight

 Honor -- The whole Alethi culture is from a twisted form of Honor.  Cultivation -- seems to have set down in shinovar and perhaps influenced society in such a way that Szeth follows the truthless law no matter what.  Odium --  This is another case like Ruin.  Hatred of some things is natural and well good.  When you see the innocent being hurt etc,  you should hate the situation and want to change it,  it's only when hatred controls you,  and you start seeing more and more of the world thru the lens of hatred that it becomes a problem

 

Elantris

They may be dead but Devotion and Domination have set off a nice little religious war.

 

Now compare this to Sazed

Mistborn Era 2

Harmony with the power of Ruin and Preservation seems to achieve some moderation.  While I'd argue that a better name for him is Discord,  He has seeming been able to come out more towards True Neutral imo.  He's helped some and hurt some,  but has seemingly moderated the worst impulses of both shards so that the excesses of neither effect the world.

 

Just wanted to see what others think.

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Indeed.

 

I think your general premise is one of the themes Brandon has been pushing with his Cosmere works though- that by splitting the power of creation into these sixteen Intents, they've unbalanced things in interesting ways.

 

I would say that Harmony is much more balanced not simply due to holding two shards, but because he's holding two so opposite shards. It helps him avoid taking too much action in one direction or another and makes him much more of a minimalist in what he's doing than the other shards appear to be, and hopefully it's to the good of Scadrial in the long run. If it had been Ruin and Cultivation he had blended... well, things would probably have worked out quite differently.

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The shard's power essential hijacks the vessel to operate it towards its intent, it seems.

It's not an issue of morality to them, I feel. Ruin doesn't think destruction is "good", he believes that it just . . . must happen.

He simply exists for the sole purpose of bringing about the end. He lives to destroy and slaughter. It is his raison d'etre. To tell Ruin of all things to not destroy is to tell fire to stop burning, gravity to not pull things towards each other, time to not flow forward. (Stick to not be a stick.) This isn't morality, it just must be done. You see it in what he describes himself as: "I am the end."

Edited by natc
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The shard's power essential hijacks the vessel to operate it towards its intent, it seems.

It's not an issue of morality to them, I feel. Ruin doesn't think destruction is "good", he believes that it just . . . must happen.

He simply exists for the sole purpose of bringing about the end. He lives to destroy and slaughter. It is his raison d'etre. To tell Ruin of all things to not destroy is to tell fire to stop burning, gravity to not pull things towards each other, time to not flow forward. (Stick to not be a stick.) This isn't morality, it just must be done. You see it in what he describes himself as: "I am the end."

 

Are you sure? Because Preservation talks about how great it was that the Lord Ruler wouldn't die. I think those vessels influenced heavily by or agreeing with their Shard's intent actually could feel good about fulfilling that intent, the same way you or I might feel good about doing well at work, I guess. :)

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Things are working properly as far as he's concerned if something doesn't die. I think that sounds great . . .

Ruin feels satisfied as well. They like things working out for them the way they want them to, definitely. The human condition and all. But the reason they want to do those things at all likely has no moral basis. Ruin wants to end it all, and is happy that it seems to be working. Preservation probably seeks to preserve for eternity, so someone being immortal is a success. But that's not really morality, I feel, not in the sense humans see it anyway. More like . . . 2 sculptors (16 with the others included) trying to chip their own preferred design into the same huge block, and is happy that it's working out better on their end than for that guy next to them with whom they have creative differences with?

And in the end, the things the shards do . . . is there even a point to it? With morality it's vague at its basis, but I think people agree that everyone doing "the right thing" ends in mutual benefits in life. And you can want to be seek morality, doubt their interpretation, willingly ignore it and to Damnation with everyone else, because your other desires take precedence, etc.

Shards destroy, preserve, spread hate, inspire honor, seemingly because . . . well what else would they do? They don't stop to think about the (lack of) sense behind it, they don't do anything else besides their intent. It's as if they have only one desire and are slowly more and more apathetic to things that go against that desire, with their personality only bleeding through when there is no contradiction.

Edited by natc
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The first Stormlight one is flimsy because

we do not know what Alethela was even like when Honor was actually alive.

Well to be honest I'm biased against Honor anyways.  To break it down into a DnD alignment system I'd say Honor in general could be represented as lawful.  I'm inclined to believe that's a horrible mindset as sometimes the rules must be broken.

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Well to be honest I'm biased against Honor anyways.  To break it down into a DnD alignment system I'd say Honor in general could be represented as lawful.  I'm inclined to believe that's a horrible mindset as sometimes the rules must be broken.

 

 

Except for the part where the one Honor Spren we know literally says "rules don't matter, only what's right". I find it hard to believe that an honorspren would be that far removed from what actual Honor is supposed to be.

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Except for the part where the one Honor Spren we know literally says "rules don't matter, only what's right". I find it hard to believe that an honorspren would be that far removed from what actual Honor is supposed to be.

True,  I admit that one does have me.  I'm still biased against the definition of the intent though.  

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