animalia Posted January 24, 2022 Posted January 24, 2022 On 2/19/2021 at 11:04 PM, Kyn said: We have to be careful not to sound like we’re accusing wronged parties of being hung up over what happened generations ago when many are still actively being oppressed. We can’t dismiss genuine grievances over continued mistreatment as some lingering hatred due to past atrocities. But at the same time, it’s harder to get over past events that continue to impose genetic and societal suffering. Reveal hidden contents Say you’re in a video game and you’re constantly losing health because the environment is poisoned. It’s fine if you’re healthy to begin with or you have resources like healing and poison nullification. But people in a society where they were slaves and remain treated as subpar don’t get that. They had no chance to heal the massive damage or nullify the smaller constant-damage-effect caused by the poison-inflicting, heavily-damaging boss they faced just before. Never getting to recover makes it hard to let go of that boss fight’s damage. Not because they can’t emotionally get over a bad past battle, but because they’re still experiencing the physical effects from it. Without some sort of restoration in between, it’s like one neverending attack instead of a past major assault that can be viewed distinctly from smaller current damages. And no, the current environmental poison isn’t as bad as the earlier boss poisoned attacks, just like constant discrimination isn’t as bad as being enslaved, but it’s still damage that’s never allayed. So, I 100% agree we shouldn’t be punishing people for the actions of their ancestors. There’s a big difference between retributive and restorative justice, between punishing sins and fixing them. But every Alethi living easier because of slave labor is responsible for their own current actions, just like every Singer who chooses to slaughter noncombatants is responsible for theirs. Every Alethi who decides nothing needs to be done to make current Singer lives better or make up for the deficit in which historical suffering leaves Singers is tacitly supporting past atrocities by affirming that they see no problem with the past atrocities’ lingering longterm effects…which makes them guilty of perpetuating those continuing injustices. If some learn the truth and can no longer justify trying to wipe out people they’ve already destroyed in more than one sense, that seems a pretty laudable response. It takes a degree of zealotry or coldness to continue killing for a cause you’ve realized wasn’t justified. And if some Alethi are fine continuing in comfort at the expense of others’ freedom, then it’s their own sins that are the problem, not their fathers’. Is this one of those “the needs of the many are the sins of a few” thing?
animalia Posted January 24, 2022 Posted January 24, 2022 On 2/22/2021 at 11:21 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Well, that's just really depressing, then. Every time you make a concession to reality, a part of your heart dies, and a bit of your soul fades. Eventually, your compromises and your imperfect methods and the things you had to do to make the world as good as it is will result in the next generation having to oppose you and destroy what you've made to make something better/"better". There's a quote from a movie that has always stuck with me (it's too much of a spoiler for me to say what movie it's from, but the quote is pretty universal). The context is that a horrific act of unjustified violence has been done by associates of Character 1 upon people that Character 2 was supposed to protect, but, because of other "greater good" considerations, Character 2 more or less abandoned -- and when Character 2 calls out Character 1, 1 points out 2's own complicity and claims that what happened was inevitable because: Character 1: We must work in the world, the world is thus. Character 2: No... thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it. What makes the Radiants special in my eyes is that they won't say things like "We must work in the world, the world is thus.", but they will say things like "Honor is dead... but I'll see what I can do.". What do you think about Hoid’s line that the world has senority?
animalia Posted January 24, 2022 Posted January 24, 2022 I am reminded of a line from Saiyuki, “that it’s easy to become a Buddha, all you have to do is die.” or Lift’s line in Oathbringer where she says “Nobody gets old with out ruining a whole bunch of lifes” The point is that there’s one sure way to make sure you never break a promise, and that’s to never give one. But if you are always holding yourself back from doing something because of fear of messing up, are you even really living?
cometaryorbit Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 On 2/19/2021 at 1:35 PM, Frustration said: I think it was WoK but maybe WoR they said Parshmen would not move, even to eat if left on their own. Much of this might be character POV - Rosharan humans thinking they are less intelligent/capable than they are. They had come to think of parshmen as basically domestic animals. (People are totally shocked by the idea that they might become a threat, when that comes out. RL societies with slavery fear uprisings/revolts. The Rosharan humans don't act that way toward parshmen at all. It's much closer to the way RL humans would react to the idea of, say, horses becoming a threat.) That fooled me in WoK/WoR. I was actually really surprised in the early chapters of Oathbringer when the post-Everstorm Singers remembered how they were treated as parshmen, after WoR revealed that Shen/Rlain was actually a dullform Parshendi and Eshonai (IIRC) says something about how they have "no spren, no song, and no soul", I had thought the parshmen had literally lost their souls & become living zombies and the Everstorm had put in a new 'foreign' consciousness.
CryoZenith he/him Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 This is probably a super hot take, but here goes. Parshmen are not singers. They are parshmen. They are treated as domestic animals because they ARE domestic animals, in terms of their sapience. Now yes, you could make the argument that we're not treating our domestic animals right either (and as a vegan, I'd agree) but that's neither here nor there. As long as you bite the bullet that it's okay to treat chulls the way they are treated, then it's okay to treat parshmen as chulls. The fact that they have the potential for sapience doesn't change the fact that they didn't have sapience *when* they were treated as chulls. Yes, of course, when the parshmen awaken and become singers, treat them with the full rights of sapient beings in your society, and integrate them in your society. But I don't think the Alethi have any moral obligation to perform reparative/restorative justice for past treatment. Because the past treatment was of parshmen, not of singers. At *most* you could make an argument for repaying them for their *own* treatment, since they do seem to have memories from during the parshmen haze, but that's entirely different from historical payback. 1
cometaryorbit Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 4 hours ago, CryoZenith said: This is probably a super hot take, but here goes. Parshmen are not singers. They are parshmen. They are treated as domestic animals because they ARE domestic animals, in terms of their sapience. See, given that they remember how they were treated in pretty clear detail, I think there has to have been much more there than either we the readers or the Rosharan humans realized. Post Everstorm they don't seem to be being "born" as totally new individuals, never before sapient (which is what I expected post WoR). But this might not have been detectable to ordinary means. I think their state was probably like a Radiant spren newly entered into the Physical Realm, sort of disconnected from their own sapience... except they didn't have the ability to form the bond they'd need to regain it. (Kal mistook Syl as an ordinary windspren at first.) I think this is also analogous to dead Shardblades/deadeyes, and (Mistborn Era 1 spoilers) Spoiler mistwraiths being humans with a Physical/Cognitive blockage Now you could totally argue that the Rosharan humans pre Oathbringer weren't personally at fault for treating them this way, as they couldn't have known any better - and I'd probably agree, unless there was evidence of sapience they should have seen but missed. Those immediately post Recreance who set up the system are much more likely to have been at fault... otoh they may not have understood what was happening either.
CryoZenith he/him Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 7 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said: Those immediately post Recreance who set up the system are much more likely to have been at fault... otoh they may not have understood what was happening either. I would agree culpability makes sense there, but, I don't actually remember if the use of parshmen as domestic animal is as old as slaveform. Was this mentioned in the books? It could very well be the case that the timeline looks something like: 1. Ba-Ado-Mishram is captured. 2. Lots of singers lose sapience and become parshmen. 3. 200-300 years pass, people forget the origin of parshmen. 4. People decide to use parshmen as farm animals.
cometaryorbit Posted January 25, 2022 Posted January 25, 2022 That's definitely a possibility. But a time gap of centuries might not be required. If most of the Radiants died shortly after the Recreance -- and even they probably did not fully understand what had happened (clearly it was not the intended result) -- the regular people might just have interpreted the events as the Singers being basically turned into zombies. That does seem to be their apparent behavior - they just kind of obey orders "blindly". The fact that there seems to be a consciousness "in there somewhere" still (since post-Everstorm they remember their previous lives as parshmen as being 'in continuity' with their current existence, rather than being newly-born consciousnesses) doesn't seem to have been visible from their externally observable behavior. I wonder how long it took for all of the newly formless singers to be "captured"* by humans? In WOK era there don't seem to be 'free' parshmen unassociated with humans. Were they slowly all 'captured' over centuries as people encountered roaming bands of parshmen, or was it an organized thing immediately after the Recreance, or did the ones unassociated with humans die off? (They do seem to be able to do basic life functions like eating without orders - but could they find shelter from highstorms, food sources, etc. reliably enough to survive over generations?) *though as they seem to automatically obey orders it was probably as simple as saying "follow me home".
CryoZenith he/him Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said: The fact that there seems to be a consciousness "in there somewhere" still (since post-Everstorm they remember their previous lives as parshmen as being 'in continuity' with their current existence, rather than being newly-born consciousnesses) doesn't seem to have been visible from their externally observable behavior. I think it's more accurate to say that they had the potential for consciousness rather than a consciousness being in there somewhere. This is more in line with the book description of the slaveform as a fugue state of extreme cloudiness of thought. So even though a singer-awakened-parshman recollects *memories* from their years as a parshman, that's different from recollecting *oppression* or *trauma* from those days, since they weren't intellectually complex enough for their qualia to access those types of suffering. I think this distinction is important to make because we shouldn't think of parshmen being quietly internally screaming but unable to externalize it (as far as we know). They were ACTUALLY internally stunted (as far as we know). It's the same as the distinction between slapping someone who is immune to pain and slapping someone who feels pain normally, but has a psychological compulsion against complaining. I don't think those two actions are equally immoral, and I don't think the latter is analogous to parshmen phenomenology.
cometaryorbit Posted January 26, 2022 Posted January 26, 2022 20 hours ago, CryoZenith said: I think it's more accurate to say that they had the potential for consciousness rather than a consciousness being in there somewhere. This is more in line with the book description of the slaveform as a fugue state of extreme cloudiness of thought. So even though a singer-awakened-parshman recollects *memories* from their years as a parshman, that's different from recollecting *oppression* or *trauma* from those days, since they weren't intellectually complex enough for their qualia to access those types of suffering. I don't know. If they were basically newly born as consciousnesses, and they didn't experience it as suffering/oppression then, why would they be angry about those past events so immediately after gaining sapience? If the memories themselves weren't traumatic/of suffering, and they haven't had a chance to learn (as sapient beings) why they should be angry about it... a large proportion of them would probably start out as sapients accepting "we do what humans order us to do", and only after some time and experience of mistreatment learn to be angry about it. There's not enough time for that learning process. They also adopt behavioral traits of their human culture - Alethi fight, Azish ones write petitions, Thaylen ones sail away. That could be some magical trick of their Connection being restored, but it could also suggest they had significant ability to observe & learn from what they observed while in the "parshman" state. I think what is really absent (or suppressed to the point that it's effectively absent) is volition, not consciousness. (Their thoughts are clouded, yes, but not absent.) In the "parshman" state they probably do genuinely have the intelligence to understand human language and act on orders*; what they lack is the volition/self-direction/initiative to decide whether they want to follow those orders, or to initiate complex actions without orders. But since Rosharan humans aren't telepathic, they have no way to know that there is a consciousness "in there", since parshmen really do act like zombies. *as opposed to it being a magical Command/Intent based process like Awakening 1
Kandrafish Posted January 30, 2022 Posted January 30, 2022 On 2/18/2021 at 11:31 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Well, if knowing that you're usurpers on the place you consider your native planet DOESN'T wreck all your idealism and confidence in the rightness of your cause, I'm not sure what will. I mean, what secret could possibly be worse? "The Shin are right, and you all are eternally condemned in the afterlife for stepping on stone"? What if the Shin are right? What if the cognitive realm in most of Roshar does weird stuff to someone's soul when they die. Maybe the soul gets munched on by angerspren. But, in Shinovar there are virtually no spren... So, no spren would mean that there is no soul munching happening. I am only sort of joking... (mostly about the soul munching angerspren bit) Maybe the the Shin do have an easier time in the cognitive realm and passing beyond. And maybe because of some past agreement to not leave Shinovar, they have little to no interactions with spren. Maybe Honor made the spren take an Oath so that Shinovar could be more like Ashyn... Finally, maybe that is the screams that Szeth hears... The screams of dead stone-walkers. (I don't actually think it is because they are walking on stone)
Recommended Posts