Having had the marvelous pleasure of chatting with Steve…he’s definitely Paarvi. ;)

I think my usage fits much better into the real world, because I recognize that ethics/morals/standards are not a static thing. Ethics and morals have slightly different denotations, in that ethics is related to theory, and morals to practice.

I used a rather extreme example, but morals also change far more casually every single day. It doesn’t have to be extreme pressure. Driving your car down the highway how often are you cut off by some selfish hypocrite with a “world peace begins locally” bumper sticker? How about a self righteous ethical view being eroded when someone watches video of a starving child?

>Uh….did I really say that? What I remember saying is that in good fiction, actions have consequences (and that is my answer to the issues of rape and torture as well), and that it is impossible to truly separate moral considerations from entertainment.

OK, you are right. My paraphrase was distortion.

Ker_thwap

>Use torture as an example: Would you be against it if your only child were kidnapped, one of the kidnappers (a jaded career criminal with no fear of jail) was in your custody, and the other (a known sadist) had your child in an unknown location?

In practical terms you don’t know that the jaded career criminal would not lie to you, distracting your from other options for finding the sadist.

More to the point, many people violate ethical principles they hold under extreme pressure. An argument that if they violate them in those circumstances, they never really held relies on defining the meaning of ethical principle from the way the term is commonly used. And you would need a new term for what the term ethics commonly means. I think it would be better to make the new term for your new meaning, and leave ethics to mean what it has always meant.

I may need a few disclaimers to make this theory work. Such as this only applies to the sane, and those normally capable of coherent thought.

Whether you die for your inflexible standards, or change your standards to adapt to situational ethics, you can’t really act otherwise than the sum of what you are.

Most people continue to learn and grow and adapt their moral values based on new experiences. It’s easy to say you’d never do something until life kicks you in the head and you find yourself in a new situation.

Use torture as an example: Would you be against it if your only child were kidnapped, one of the kidnappers (a jaded career criminal with no fear of jail) was in your custody, and the other (a known sadist) had your child in an unknown location? Suddenly your world view may change to think that institutional torture is bad, but this specific torture is fine.

These are often the kind of dilemmas that fantasy writers pose to us. I think great good comes of making us consider such things, lest we fall into the trap getting too attached to our own pet causes and not considering the other guys point of view.