Postby m0zart1 » April 6th, 2007, 2:46 pm
[QUOTE=Alienblue]Actually, mOzart, there is more than meets the eye to that spock scene in Star Trek two. First of all, in the REAL world, Lenord Nimoy only agreed to come back to a second Trek film if Spock could die at the end, and he could at last leave the character behind. He had no intention of "ressurcting" him...but fan response was so great he changed his mind. "In -trekkie - universe", Spock also had no way of knowing he would live again at that moment. But doesn't it still make sense that he do it? The ship was going to explode and kill everyone ANYway! INCLUDING Spock! If you know you are going to die anyway, why not try anything to at least save some? I hate to bring reality into this, but I'm reminded of why that one plane with terrorists did NOT crash into the White House on 9/11 .... those people knew they were dead one way or the other. But they sacrificed their lives for their country...[/QUOTE]
I think to some extent, you have a point. But only because I don't really consider an act like that to be self-sacrifice if you know you are going to die anyway. It's a Hobson's Choice.
I am also not sure of your interpretation. I realize Star Trek 2 might have had that interpretation originally, but at the end of the movie, according to Star Trek 3, Spock transfers his soul to Dr. McCoy, and the implication is that it is for the express purpose of returning that spirit to him at a later date when they reunite. Now, obviously this could have been an add-on to Star Trek 3, but the artist is often expanding the details of his story as he goes on. It is a perfectly normal thing for the writers in this case to do.
[QUOTE=Alienblue]self sacrifice can be seen in animals even, when a dog dies to save it's master, or, in nature, the lead dog. Even insects like ants/bees die to save the queen. I don't quite understand where you say such an act is wrong or doesn't make sense?[/QUOTE]
Well, I am not a dog or an insect who lives by instinct. I am a man -- a rational animal that lives by his mind. I wasn't born with a pack-instinct, and even if I had been, I have a mind that can by choice override it. I don't feel the need to be loyal to a queen or a master. I live by my own rational self-interest. That means I might "sacrifice" for someone I place great value in, but I would by no means just do it for some higher concept like "the human race" or an authority figure who has lived the good life at my expense. If I died for my country, it would only be if I determined that living in a country taken over by a foreign power would be an unacceptible condition for me, or again those I place great value in individually, to continue living in. Of course, that's just about any other country on Earth, though certainly not all of them. If I died for the human race, even, you can bet that my reasons would be based on my own self-interest in terms of what living in a world absent of other humans (including individual loved ones) would be like and whether I considered that a life worth living.
I don't believe altruism is the proper way for a man to live his life. Even when I give to others, I do it primarily because I get great pleasure in it. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother. For instance, if I had a friend I cared for deeply who was losing his wife, I might splurge money for him to help save her because I place great value in at least one of them. But if my own wife was also dying, should I choose his wife over mine? That would be self-sacrifice in the truest sense of the term, and just why should I consider his needs greater than mine? The fact is that the only reason to do for one and not the other is that I place value in my own wife that is greater than that of my friend's wife. And that is a VERY self-interested thing to do.
Most of the truly horrible and evil empires on Earth have been built around this concept of self-sacrifice, collectivism, altruism -- whatever you want to call it. When they call for an end to greed and the beginning of some new age, or start claiming that the needs of the whole are greater than the needs of the individual, you can bet your bottom-side that the next step is going to be to pick those who will need to be sacrificed for the "greater good". They won't hesitate. So many of these dictators and even some leaders in relatively free countries (I won't name any names) operate under this notion that any man should give his skin for any other group of men if they need it -- and in most cases, those leaders are willing to skin every man alive to prove it.
If a man feels he must sacrifice, because he places great value in those he is saving by doing it, as Spock almost certainly did, then I don't know if I really consider that self-sacrifice, because the alternative of living without them (or even dying anyway, as you pointed out) isn't really a valid life-choice either. In such a situation, either answer can be right or wrong. But that being the case, Spock's "lesson" speech at the end was most assuredly out of place. If he was going to die anyway, then it wasn't a demonstration of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, it was a demonstration of someone doing what needed to be done to protect everyone. In other words, there isn't a "few" to sacrifice vs. "many" to protect if both the "few" and the "many" are going to die in the same explosion anyway.
[QUOTE=Alienblue]And what the HECK does all this have to do with WARIO?! I've created a monster! AHHHH![/QUOTE]
LOL, well you asked an ethical question when you asked if Wario could be a villain and still be a hero. You asked it in the field of aesthetics primarily rather than ethics, but still, the values expressed by any work of art often are intended to be moral values.
