if a person engages in a holy war thinking he or she is somehow chosen and thus above the law, bad things will happen and this person will turn into a modern-day Jack the Ripper. Only when we determine that a person does not believe they are the One True Hero and that someone else could take their place will that person manage to avoid the pitfalls of power.
I...am going to have to disagree for this particular situation. Something like this, you need egomaniacs who believe they can/will win and who are FUCKING CRAZY, like Delenn and to a lesser extent Sheridan, because sane people are going to take one look at the odds and go, "Well, shit, we're screwed."
Okay, so, see...I got issues with this. Big ones. Like, several comments' worth, most likely.
Part of the reason I love this episode is because of the effect it has on the viewer. It forces us as we watch it to ask who each of us is, to ask if we could ever be so dedicated to a cause that we would submit to something this horrible in its name, and if we could ever believe in something to the extent where we couldn't see anything else. And if we can, what does that mean for us and those around us? Is it a good thing (our society lionizes deep focus) or will it destroy us. I'd think that, offscreen somewhere after this episode, all that occurs to Sheridan and Delenn in one helluva big way, too.
But that's not why I have issues with what you're saying here. I have issues with it because history stands in the way of your point. Pick your historical nutjob--Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, maybe even George W. Bush--and you'll see that every blessed one of them would have failed the Vorlon test. Every one of them believed with incredible single-mindedness that they were absolutely right and that no one else could see that more clearly than they could--and I think we've seen what happened to people who disagreed with them. It generally didn't go well. And along the way, you could say that, to varying degrees, each of these people lost touch with his humanity. You'll notice that there are no "good guys" on the list (unless you watch Fox News).
There's a reason for this. You're assuming that an adviser is going to get through to someone this single-minded when they're about to ride off the rails, but history shows us otherwise. Psychology shows us otherwise. Once you reach a certain point, you're past listening to other folks, and that, generally speaking, is why we end up with atrocities. You've gobbled up your own propaganda to where you believe every morsel of it and anyone who disagrees gets his head chopped off. Garibaldi, Ivanova, Lennier--in the situation as you outline it, they don't last very long. There's a certain naïvete in the belief that they ever would have.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 10:10 pm (UTC)I...am going to have to disagree for this particular situation. Something like this, you need egomaniacs who believe they can/will win and who are FUCKING CRAZY, like Delenn and to a lesser extent Sheridan, because sane people are going to take one look at the odds and go, "Well, shit, we're screwed."
Okay, so, see...I got issues with this. Big ones. Like, several comments' worth, most likely.
Part of the reason I love this episode is because of the effect it has on the viewer. It forces us as we watch it to ask who each of us is, to ask if we could ever be so dedicated to a cause that we would submit to something this horrible in its name, and if we could ever believe in something to the extent where we couldn't see anything else. And if we can, what does that mean for us and those around us? Is it a good thing (our society lionizes deep focus) or will it destroy us. I'd think that, offscreen somewhere after this episode, all that occurs to Sheridan and Delenn in one helluva big way, too.
But that's not why I have issues with what you're saying here. I have issues with it because history stands in the way of your point. Pick your historical nutjob--Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, maybe even George W. Bush--and you'll see that every blessed one of them would have failed the Vorlon test. Every one of them believed with incredible single-mindedness that they were absolutely right and that no one else could see that more clearly than they could--and I think we've seen what happened to people who disagreed with them. It generally didn't go well. And along the way, you could say that, to varying degrees, each of these people lost touch with his humanity. You'll notice that there are no "good guys" on the list (unless you watch Fox News).
There's a reason for this. You're assuming that an adviser is going to get through to someone this single-minded when they're about to ride off the rails, but history shows us otherwise. Psychology shows us otherwise. Once you reach a certain point, you're past listening to other folks, and that, generally speaking, is why we end up with atrocities. You've gobbled up your own propaganda to where you believe every morsel of it and anyone who disagrees gets his head chopped off. Garibaldi, Ivanova, Lennier--in the situation as you outline it, they don't last very long. There's a certain naïvete in the belief that they ever would have.