ParaTulip

France was one of the great world powers of the 19th and 20th centuries. It continues to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I don't know how to respond to the idea that France has been a ruin in the last 300 years. I think there's a lot to be said about how France has brought ruin to West Africa, South East Asia, and North Africa, but then I am not sure what rich country isn't connected to that history.

One and two are your personal preference, and not on the order of "Wait, is this a crime?" right? Like, if you saw someone getting intimate with a dog, that's upsetting because the dog can't meaningfully consent. But if someone found an adult and talking octopus to engage in a Fisherman's Wife situation after talking it all through, that would not have the same upsetting element, yeah? The third requirement you have is even weirder to imagine for me. One of my highschool friends was born to and raised by a lesbian couple. They couldn't get married in the state they resided, but they had two daughters via IVF and donor materials. The fact they couldn't create children with each other was nothing weird to me, since my own mother had undergone voluntary tubal ligation surgery after her second child was born healthy because she decided she didn't want any more children. She went on to get divorced and remarried after that. The notion of something like the Harkness Test is more a way to judge the morality of fictional characters. I get that some people's personal preferences and morals around intimacy are "When married, with the understanding that it's for making babies". I actually looked through the Roman Catholic Church's catechism for fun once, and I assume some people take that all to heart, but I hope modern people are tolerant enough to let others be different.

People were starving in France. This is the common matter between a lot of periods of the most rapid social change: People in mass will tear down the old system because it was killing them, while smaller groups will try to vie to be the one to replace the system. While you are right to be critical of the propaganda put in the time period, you should understand that there were actual shortages of food in France before the revolution. Same. It feels like their perspective on the war would be so different from the Listeners or the humans.

https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-harkness-test-and-when-should-you-use-it Due to the taboos around sexual intimacy with non-sapient beings, science fiction fans have come up with some answers to "is it acceptable that those two characters are doing that?" for kissing stuff. It is named for a character from Doctor Who. I think that is because, for a lot of people, fantasies of love are about those moments of intense feeling. That and stories about people kissing with feeling have a kind of excitement to them that is not too different from the excitement of characters sword fighting.

Well, that's a relief. Back to posting I guess. I am sorry that you think this is obvious, but it is not to me. I always found this quote from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court a bit helpful for getting my views on this across. I hope you don't mind the continued focus on French history but french scholars as a fondness of mine Further more, I do not know when or how "social changes by fiat, all at once" in a literal sense can be said to have happened. I know of periods of rapid social change, but those tend to be the product of the confluence of systems collapse driven by material and social conditions. I admit, I am not a historian in any formal sense of the term, but give me some examples of these kinds of moments of "massive social changes by fiat" so we can understand each other.

Okay, so I am sorry to jump on you about this but I really want to know: What do you mean by "This is fantasy after all"?

You should try to tell this story in Haiti. Those scars you are describing, who's fault are they? In the USA, how long should slaves have waited to be given freedom in the South? Should the Russian peasants have accepted that it was their lot in life to be sent to die in WWI and not resist? Also, where do you think society is without the ugly scars of class division? Do you think that the UK, which did abolish slavery by law after first instituting it across the world, is without racial strife or material inequality? Do you think the people who desperately try to cross the channel into England, and are subjected to deportation, aren't the scars of the English Empire in the same way that the racial disparities of the USA are the scars of that country's history of cattle slavery? Likewise, the Napoleonic Wars were what ended serfdom in huge segments of Europe. Is a decade of warfare somehow not scarring? I don't know where and how you think truly peaceful social progress has been made, but I think you should learn more history. Where neither slavery or serfdom itself was not the pain of the lower class, there is the similarly horrible experience of the 1954 Guatemalan coup, where colonial overlords have brought down terror to shape society in their favor. This is not to say that no project like social democracy is possible. There were successful programs to implement social security, workers rights, and even certain women's rights during the time period you are describing and they were larger civil. Getting back to Roshar, I think if Jasnah's program of freeing slaves and instituting legal equality had been what the Alethi had been doing, instead of their War of Reckoning, then I would get someone saying "The Singers are ungrateful fools", but that's not the world they awoke to. Their experience was one of being hated, lied to, and memories of being slaves. This is in the non-cosmere thread, so I can't ask you to explain your perspective on the dynamics of Era 1 mistborn I guess, but I hope I have demonstrated a broad enough understanding of history to enable a dialogue on this topic.

Maybe people who were enslaved not feeling grateful for being kept as slaves is normal. I think I recall the Azish Singers trying to start a lawsuit demanding freedom and back wages so they could start normal lives at some point, and they got slow rolled while the people they were negotiating with got ready to fight, with no honest intent to make restitution on the part of the humans. Quick check over to the coppermind, this cites to Oathbringer chapter 12 if you want to double check. If the humans of Roshar had responded to the awakening of the Singers like someone whose disable child was suddenly given their missing faculties, this probably would have all gone differently. Instead, they treated the matter like a slave revolt, and so they got a slave revolt.

How does someone only get as far as Well of Ascension and decide they know what the whole vibe of the cosmere as a setting is like? I feel like the problem with WaT's ending is that RoW wasted the opportunity to actually explain "humans are the bad guys according to the Singers" in a way that resonated with the readers. If you view the ending of WaT from the perspective of the Singers, it is "Finally, we beat the voidbringers for the first time! Our era of peace and freedom has arrived! The endless suffering of the Fused may end." and stuff like that. It's not Empire Strikes Back for them. This is Return of the Jedi from their perspective.

Coming in on team "would" on this. The only real problem with most Singers as subjects of relationships is that they have only been properly sapient for two or so years in the story so far, so that is kinda weird. I guess really I am a "would" for like Leshwi and Raboniel, since they are both experienced enough in life and sane enough to not be too weird to be in a relationship with. Maybe El, if he isn't like Moash and impossible to have fun around. Also, I am incidentally on the team of people who are against Syladin, but mostly because I want Syl off screen. I don't care about her being killed off or something, but I just don't like her character. Her primary motivation being helping Kaladin with his damage because he reminds her of a type of person she likes is so weird and offputting. It's like he's her child, except she's deeply immature. I actually was briefly excited by the idea that Kaladin and Leshwi were going to turn out to have something like what it seems ended up being Garith's situation: It's kinda obvious that the best way to protect people is to make a just peace, and there's something classically beautiful about having deep personal feelings be the source of that. Their whole thing of going on sparring dates had such an appeal to me.

That's still different from the Spren that were explicitly created from the substance of Shards.

I think the matter of having rights over investiture that composes the Spren is different? Rosharan Humans aren't especially made of Honor anymore than they are any other shard outside the nahel bond, so reclaiming their constitutent matter and stuff is somehow less in the rights of Honor than doing the same to the, explicitly made of Honor and Cultivation investiture, Spren. This really turns on a logic where parents own their children and then their childrens' children down forever. Not a fan of this kind of thinking, but it fits with Honor operating on a lot of bad patterns.

The contrary: I disagree, because I take a broader perspective on what makes a statement good or bad. I understand that most societies have taboos around sex and death in various forms. It might be good for someone to make that comparison as a way to illustrate their particular mode of moral reasoning. I think being able to willfully hold to contradictions is an innate part of the nature of existing for me. To be both sacred and profane is, from my perspective, the normal way of being. But the way the in group is defined varies by society. Once, the Ottoman state would have all of the sons of the prior Sultan fight in a battle to the death, turning their armies on one another, to vie for their father's throne. This was the expectation and the norm. It was not rejected. What is the universal notion of an in-group if it is not one's siblings? Please do not call my myopic again if you are going to claim something is universal when there are clear counter examples in the historic record. I see well enough to know that notions of the universal are most often either illusions or whatever it is about math that makes it so unreasonably effective. It is not that something is common that makes it universal, but that it is true in all cases.

Fellow Kelsier fan! What do you like about him? I have recently watched the gundam movie Char's Counter Attack and I am pretty sure I like Kel for the same reasons I like Char: They both demonstrate a kind of limitless willpower even in the face of the impossible, but they have a clear humanity to them for how they can be moved by love for others.

I think taking up Ruin would be really hard on Kor, based on what we have seen of her. She is, even after so long carrying Cultivation, still unhappy with the parts of the Intent which are pleased by war. If I was to combine the two ideas, Ruin and Cultivation, it does give me the mental image of a Reaper figure, perhaps by the name of Harvest. I would love to see an amendment to Hemalurgy that allows the spikes to be planted in the ground and used to grow magical fruit, but this is probably my fascination with the way World of Darkness presents Lilith in its mythos. I think the idea of her going to Sel to try to pick up as much of Devotion and Dominion's power makes more sense. Devotion especially seems like an idea her story, of loving Tanavast, losing him, and the way she cared to bring the society she was involved with away from Retribution's domain, would support her becoming involved with. I actually personally think she would go to Bavadin and say "Hey, I am sorry for hanging out in the same place as Tanavast for the last 10k years even though we all agreed to not do that before ascending. I see the error of my ways. I am now convinced of the one shard per system notion. Can we do something about these dishards by coordinating plans or is that infringing on your Intent? Do you want me to just throw some plants out that you can shine on as you want?" or something. The two of them knew each other before the shattering, so I assume Kor knows how to talk to Bavadin.

I think this all depends on what the time scale for the second arc is and what the heck Jasnah is going to be doing as a former queen. I can't imagine her deciding to just hangout and act as an advisor and warrior for Renarin and Rlain's project of a unified Human-Singer state that isn't ruled by the Fused and Taravangian. If the story is going to span the whole 80 years of slowed time (Jasnah's a fourth oath radiant who is probably spending a lot of her time in Urithu, where her body is constantly able to access to radiant self-healing, so her living that long isn't implausible considering how high levels of investiture seem to extend lifespan) then she can get up to a lot of things off screen while still being a major perspective. Or she is just going to go worldhopping and thus will be out of the picture for long stretches of time, and whatever she gets up to out in the rest of the cosmere is going to be saved for flashbacks.

To be extremely explicit: using the example of murder as a universal wrong is pointless because the concept of murder contains within it the notion of wrong. This is the meaning of the word as I understand it. To say killing a person is wrong is different from saying murder is wrong. An executioner for works for the state is not seen to be a murderer by that state. A soldier who kills the enemy in war is not seen to be a murderer. A person who kills in self defense is not called a murderer. Thus, the word murder is not useful in discussions of morality, because it is defined as wrong. If the killing is not wrong, it is not murder. Simply saying "that's myopic" or "the alternative is absurd" doesn't make a compelling argument to me. Further, I don't find any meaningful appeal in the reason "s considered bad in basically every culture we know of, hence it is a (nearly) universal moral value." Why does it matter how many cultures believe a certain thing? Also, you stated your views are grounded in "care-based ethics, i.e. behaviours that promote healthy relationships and well-being of individuals, and their interdependance." Why does commonality across cultures matter to you then? If it was common across most cultures to abandon the elderly to the wilderness, would that be meaningful in your grounding? In my own, I see queer relationships as good because they add to the variety of the world. To suppose that romantic and sexual love can only be expressed in a certain way is to limit the potential for the expression. This is thus wrong to me. Further, I am deeply opposed to arguments which suppose actions like sex ought to serve some purpose, the roman catholic line against homosexuality being one of these (I have actually looked to the catechism to get a sense of this), and I am one to agree with Oscar Wilde: What is truly beautiful is utterly useless.

It actually is extremely helpful. Thank you for putting in the effort of explaining it. I have kind of been dreading a sort of "one or the other" outcome to this kind of an arc to the grander narrative, since there is a lot of absolutism around God in the forms of Christianity I have experience with, but the way you explained your understanding of LSD beliefs makes me think there is a way to imagine an outcome of "Yeah, we built a mono-god, but we'll treat that god like a tree from which scions may be drawn or a aspirational figure for others to see as a role model instead of as a sole ruler of the whole cosmos". Honestly, a lot of forms of religion feel like they are yet to process the genuine awe that the scale of the universe effects, being stuck with the impression that the stars and planets are simply decorations of the night sky instead of things comparable to the Earth itself.

I am glad to see someone is trying to make sense of the Unmade. I was personally really disappointed that the making of the Heralds got so much time and attention while their equal counterparts in the Unmade were ignored. It's been kinda weird to have this story with so much interest in the morality of war that gives so little time to the people fighting for theirs liberation. I do find the idea that the Unmade are the Spren of ancient Singer cities interesting. It would explain why they are on the side of the Singers even when they are against Odium. I don't know if there's enough evidence to conclude things about the nature of the fourth moon or supposing it had anything to do with Valor. Since Tanavast's memory doesn't include the event of it crashing, I feel as if it must have done so before the Shattering.

I am not saying this. Society says this. Murder is wrong when a killing is found to be wrong. Perversion or sexual immorality is wrong only when intimacy is found to be wrong. Right and wrong exist outside the acts of killing or loving a human being. If we do try to explain our own perspectives on when a killing is wrong, then all we say when we say murder is wrong is that wrongful acts are wrong. Then what is yours? Mine is simple enough: Morality is just the aesthetics of prideful priests. I desire a beautiful world, and yet I know that my sense of what is beautiful is my own, and thus I do not seek a universal moral reasoning. Utilitarians disgust me as they suppose they can know the desires of others as a mass.

My point is that there's no reason to assume the singular motivation of thinking about racial replacement was the motivation for the shattering because even in a world where Adonalsium was doing such a scheme, there would be plenty of reason to kill Adonalsium without caring about the, again, racist and fascist thinking of replacement. The idea that humanity would be lost because it might mix with another type of person is a kind of xenophobia that our world has clear analogues to in the form of people who speak of conspiracies like "the great replacement". If it turns out Hoid and company were driven by that kind of a motive, it would paint them all as ugly people in a rather bland way.

I have tried to read it, but the graphic novel failed to hold my interest. I recall finding Kenton just impossible to care about for some reason. I also don't think Bavadin's idea of good really seems to care about humans in particular or even sapient life. The impression I have off what I have seen is that she seems more interested in promoting the growth of bacteria and birds than she does the progress of human technology. I think this is an attitude fitting for someone who would aspire to be one of the gods. Humans are fearsome enough creatures, it's the rest of the world that truly needs a god.

I have a different view on this: It seems like Autonomy just wants to maintain the order of 16. Harmony is a problem for her because Sazed formed a dishard. I imagine Retribution is next on her list of people to try to break up. Fusing shards together denies the Autonomy of their individual Intents. Until I see some other motive, this feels like the simplest and best explanation of why she acts like she does. Creating Avatars in various places is, to my mind, more just a way to try to do good without becoming the monogod ruler of everything. The fact religions she has influenced promote ambition would seem like a design on restoring the first Shard that Odium wrecked.

I think you are mislead to not see the earnest comparison. Murder is wrong because it is defined as the wrongful killing of another person. There is a different notion, homicide, which is distinct from murder. It is thus possible to see in someone's comparison of relationships of two people of the same gender or sex the same notion that there is a rightful and a wrongful conduct of physical intimacy, and they have adopted some ethos which says homosexuality is innately wrong. I think asking about taking away is too much of an imposition of a frame. The morality of utility has plenty of flaws, and so you might be better to not assume it is reasonable to other people when talking to them. I want to be clear that I agree with your position, people should be accepting of queer relationships. However, I have seen these kinds of arguments before. I have felt that they are flawed on a deep level, and I am hoping this discussion will be a place where less flawed arguments might be forged.