OT - Watchmen on trial

Tony Ellis · 22 Mar 2005, 13:17 · from 2005-March.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Tue Mar 22 13:17:35 2005
Subject: (urth) Re:  OT - Watchmen on trial
Message-ID: <000201c52f24$89ba1910$6401a8c0@TONYSPC>

Crush wrote:

>>Tony Ellis says:
>>True. Ozymandias chose to sacrifice the few to save the many. Severian

>>does it the other way around. :-)

>When one considers the generations unborn on Urth if the New Sun does 
>not come, then the opposite is true.

If what counts is the number of descendants the survivors of a mass
slaughter might one day have, then mass slaughter on any scale, no
matter how horrifically vast, can always be justified as the killing of
the few. We tend to measure these things in terms of actual people
killed.

And what about all the generations who *will* be born on Urth if the New
Sun doesn't come? Not to mention all those born on all the other worlds
to which humanity is transplanted after Urth dies. Don't they count?

Both Ozymandias' and Severian's mass-murders of innocents will in theory
ensure the preservation of future generations. But if you're going to
differentiate between their achievements - especially in the same breath
as you use the word 'fascist' - then the ratio of those saved to those
slaughtered seems significant.

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