The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Question regarding a WOJ about "Changes". -I dont see what Harry did wrong.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: BrainFireBob on October 05, 2020, 10:19:50 PM ---Notice your use of "I." Your conceptual gap is your fanon. You don't trust the White Council, or its understanding of how black magic works, despite Harry agreeing with them on how it works and "taints" the magic of a wizard or sorcerer.
Harry chose to make a Faustian bargain for selfish reasons- paternal love for a child. While sympathetic, it was in some respects the moral equivalent of having a child needing an organ donor and murdering people until a matching donor was found- that's what the "whatever" in "whatever it takes" means. Harry is going to kill whatever he needs to kill, and allow whatever friends and allies need to die to die, to save Maggie. He might feel bad about it later, but he's quite clear that feeling bad later isn't going to stop him now. That's . .not a good choice, from a strictly moral perspective.
It worked out for him. Intentions do in fact matter, not just actions. If my wife is having a heart attack and I run a red light because she's dying on the way to the hospital, but then run over a pedestrian, it is neither legally nor morally the same as slamming on my gas when I see a pedestrian walking to run them over laughing. One is Murder 1: Deliberate and malicious homicide, one is negligent homicide or reckless endangerment- I knowingly took actions I knew *might* result in the death of someone but neither intended them to result nor planned for them to result. It's why such distinctions exist. In fact, that's the essence of the self-defense defense Harry has vs Justin- Harry did not want to kill Justin, he wanted to not-be-dead from Justin, which required killing same. No malice or enjoyment, the intention was self-preservation.
Harry annihilated the Red Court- and the heroic Fellowship of St. Giles. Good with the bad. He didn't do it for the war, or even to save his own life- in that respect, *not* selfish. He did it for his personal child- not all the children the Red Court regularly killed. It was personal.
"Buts" are justifications, not validations.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: BrainFireBob on October 05, 2020, 10:19:50 PM ---Notice your use of "I." Your conceptual gap is your fanon. You don't trust the White Council, or its understanding of how black magic works, despite Harry agreeing with them on how it works and "taints" the magic of a wizard or sorcerer.
--- End quote ---
Nope. This has been alluded to in WOJ, and in the books directly. The laws do not make moral sense. Luccio even says that they are about power, not morality. And you realize that both the WC and Harry can be wrong right? And even if this was not the case, I am well within my rights to have a "fanon" and argue the point if the "canon" doesn't make any sense.
--- Quote from: BrainFireBob on October 05, 2020, 10:19:50 PM ---
Harry chose to make a Faustian bargain for selfish reasons- paternal love for a child. While sympathetic, it was in some respects the moral equivalent of having a child needing an organ donor and murdering people until a matching donor was found- that's what the "whatever" in "whatever it takes" means. Harry is going to kill whatever he needs to kill, and allow whatever friends and allies need to die to die, to save Maggie. He might feel bad about it later, but he's quite clear that feeling bad later isn't going to stop him now. That's . .not a good choice, from a strictly moral perspective.
It worked out for him. Intentions do in fact matter, not just actions. If my wife is having a heart attack and I run a red light because she's dying on the way to the hospital, but then run over a pedestrian, it is neither legally nor morally the same as slamming on my gas when I see a pedestrian walking to run them over laughing. One is Murder 1: Deliberate and malicious homicide, one is negligent homicide or reckless endangerment- I knowingly took actions I knew *might* result in the death of someone but neither intended them to result nor planned for them to result. It's why such distinctions exist. In fact, that's the essence of the self-defense defense Harry has vs Justin- Harry did not want to kill Justin, he wanted to not-be-dead from Justin, which required killing same. No malice or enjoyment, the intention was self-preservation.
Harry annihilated the Red Court- and the heroic Fellowship of St. Giles. Good with the bad. He didn't do it for the war, or even to save his own life- in that respect, *not* selfish. He did it for his personal child- not all the children the Red Court regularly killed. It was personal.
"Buts" are justifications, not validations.
--- End quote ---
- sorry but who did Harry Murder exactly?
-I said motivations, not intentions. There is a difference. Intentions are what you are striving to accomplish. Motivations are why you want to accomplish it. And I did not say motivations are totally irrelevant, I said they only apply in certain cases and in certain ways.
"If my wife is having a heart attack and I run a red light because she's dying on the way to the hospital, but then run over a pedestrian, it is neither legally nor morally the same as slamming on my gas when I see a pedestrian walking to run them over laughing."
Your right, these are entirely different. But its the action that is different. In case one the choice you made was to violate a utilitarian law (traffic laws) in order to save you wife. Given the circumstances, the violation is justified. In the second case you chose to violate the law without a good reason, and in fact you had a abhorrent reason which only increases the terribleness of the crime.
What you accused Harry of is entirely different. It would be like if Harry got in his car and decided to speed because he had to get his wife to the hospital. Then he ran a red light due to the first reason, but when he did so he thought it was funny when there happened to be a person there and he ran them over. The fact that he enjoyed killing the person makes him guilty of nothing, since the justification for running the red light was already present even if that person had not been there or they had never been run over.
" In fact, that's the essence of the self-defense defense Harry has vs Justin- Harry did not want to kill Justin, he wanted to not-be-dead from Justin, which required killing same. No malice or enjoyment, the intention was self-preservation."
If I enjoy killing someone in self defense it makes me guilty of nothing. What matters is why would not kill someone. In other words, if I enjoyed killing people, would I restrain myself from doing so if I knew there was no justification to do so.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: noblehunter on October 05, 2020, 10:40:41 PM ---The point of bringing up sexual harassment is that adult's decision making is compromised when their teacher is asking them something. That's why professors aren't allowed to sleep with their students.
Your teacher shouldn't be asking you for sex and he shouldn't be asking you to risk your life and potentially go dark side. And an apprentice's master has even more authority over her than a professor or teacher.
--- End quote ---
The difference here, as I went to great lengths to explain, is that the reason why you ask for something in a situation like this matters. If a professor asked his or her students for help in clearing their neighborhood of street thugs (ignore the vigilantism for the sake of argument) is not the same as asking the students for sexual favors. And like I said, this entire situation is the fault of either Molly of the WC, not Harry.
And second, the rules regarding adult professors and adult students are utilitarian and not moral. And professor and a student having sexual relations would be fine so long as the professor is not granting grading favors or threatening the student with reprisal if the student does not want to be in a relationship. The reason we ban this outright is because purely utilitarian, like a lot of laws. It is hard to know what the relationship between the student and professor was. It also causes problems with conflicts of interests. Even if the professor never gave the student better grades, it is an unacceptable situation for everyone else in the class or school to accept that situation.
morriswalters:
--- Quote from: Shift8 on October 05, 2020, 08:40:20 PM ---I was perusing the WOJ database looking for things that might be relevant to some BG theories. I came across one where Jim is responding to a person who is disappointed about changes. This persons complaint was that they had been wondering what would make Harry act in immoral fashion. Essentially, what kind of pressure would it take to make Harry go over the edge? This person was disappointed because as they saw it, the fact that Jim made it so that Harry was trying to save Maggie turned the moral dilemma into a cop out.
Jim then responds by explaining that Maggie being in danger doesn't excuse Dresden because that's not a good enough excuse.
My confusion is that I don't get what exactly Harry was supposed to have done wrong in Changes. What was the big moral dilemma?
--- End quote ---
Read Ghost Story. The whole book is about what he did. It isn't about anyone other than Molly. He threw her under the bus out of selfishness. It wasn't the assault on the Reds, it was asking Molly to do Black magic because he didn't want to face the consequences of his choices. And then leaving her alone. The Fallen Angel made him feel despair, but his pain was no excuse to hurt Molly.
--- Quote ---I’d saved Maggie—but had I destroyed my apprentice in doing so? The fact that I’d gotten myself killed had no relative bearing on the morality of my actions, if I had. You can’t just walk around picking and choosing which lives to save and which to destroy. The inherent arrogance and the underlying evil of such a thing runs too deep to be avoided—no matter how good your intentions might be.
Butcher, Jim. Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, Book 13) (p. 542). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
--- End quote ---
That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Mira:
--- Quote ---Quote
I’d saved Maggie—but had I destroyed my apprentice in doing so? The fact that I’d gotten myself killed had no relative bearing on the morality of my actions, if I had. You can’t just walk around picking and choosing which lives to save and which to destroy. The inherent arrogance and the underlying evil of such a thing runs too deep to be avoided—no matter how good your intentions might be.
Butcher, Jim. Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, Book 13) (p. 542). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
--- End quote ---
Or one has an over active guilt complex, and gives his apprentice absolutely no credit for making her own choices whether they were right or wrong. Perhaps his choices were wrong, but he didn't force her to make the wrong choices, she did that on her own.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: Mira on October 05, 2020, 11:04:07 PM ---Or one has an over active guilt complex, and gives his apprentice absolutely no credit for making her own choices whether they were right or wrong. Perhaps his choices were wrong, but he didn't force her to make the wrong choices, she did that on her own.
--- End quote ---
This is a great point. Harry throughout the series has this complex. In fact this complex is sometimes a trope that gets explicitly exposed during a story, namely that when a character frequently ascribes too much blame to themselves it is a sign of a certain degree of narcissism.
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