UN: Kues

[mirakills]

Do you have a nemesis?

And before I get the chatter about 'well isn't this post ominous' or 'my nemesis is posts like these', you all seem like a very colorful sort that live unique lives back home. Besides, it's an adequate way to look out for people who might be dangerous in upcoming months.

Comments

text; @housewins

[athiefalways]

Thankfully nobody here, and I haven't had a nemesis in a while...though I suppose my team has several.

[mirakills]

Ah.
Are you a 'hero'?
Or something of the sort? The team bit tips you off.

[athiefalways]

People call me that, sometimes, and I guess it's true enough.

[mirakills]

You save the general populace from outside harm, then. That's enough of a definition.

How do you feel about them? Your enemies. Misguided products of an unfair life or an evil to be taken down?

[athiefalways]

Depends on who they are. Evil is relative, though. People use it to make it easier to fight, but everybody's got their reasons. I fight to protect what's mine. Sometimes, so do they, or for what they believe is right.

[mirakills]

Indeed, everyone is the hero of their own story. Perspective changes everything, like flipping the chessboard over and seeing all the new moves.

But there is such a thing as true cruelty, isn't there?

[athiefalways]

Of course there is, but we could talk this around in circles forever. What makes it cruel? The sense of guilt? Where'd the guilt come from?

[mirakills]

Cruelty is neither guilt nor lack of empathy. I think it needs both.

Cruelty lacking empathy is just insanity.
Cruelty with guilt is just hatred.

Cruelty with both is the sheer desire to inflict pain onto others for the sake of pain being felt, as a means to an end, no matter how pithy. Like... when I was a little girl, tipping candle wax onto summer ants that find their way into my home. I wanted to see how they'd struggle before they'd die from the heat or the wax hardening. It was scientific, I gained something, albeit small, from it, and living things lost their lives, again, albeit small.

That's cruelty, to its atom.

[athiefalways]

You did that?

[Cruelty is one way to describe that. Sociopathic was another.]

Because you wanted to see how they'd struggle? Okay, that's a good description of cruelty. Now I'm just wondering if you're still just as cruel.

[mirakills]

I was five. I knew that it was wrong to hurt animals, but I didn't have the grasp of thinking of ants as animals as much as things. Children are quite cruel.

I don't pour candle wax on ants anymore, no.

[athiefalways]

Not all children.

[There's a pause between these lines.]

But that's good to know.

[mirakills]

Is that so.

[ Bernkastel's upgraded from ants. ]

I'd argue that there's a base potential for cruelty in anyone, but some people might instead call that the good and evil argument.

[athiefalways]

Maybe so.

[There's a pause.]

Maybe I just like to think we're all better than that, and that children are the most innocent among us, not the most cruel, that evil isn't born, and our morals don't keep that depravity in check, that there's just as much goodness in us as not.

[mirakills]

...

You're an idealist, I see?

[ No point not pointing out the truth. Bernkastel believes the opposite. Anything can be shaped, influenced, made into cruelty, as she herself is an example. ]

[athiefalways]

The world needs a few idealists. After all, every good change the world's ever seen started as someone's ideal.

The same could be said for the bad ones, I know, but everything started as someone's fantasy. They just mustered the strength of will to make it reality.