From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jun 19 2002 - 11:03:26 MDT
Phil writes
> [Lee wrote]
> > I'm not sure how you're coming down on this, Phil.
> > It's crazy to even begin to equate whatever Rand does
> > to a non-living non-breathing character to a murder of
> > a real person!
>
> Well, you should've backed up in the thread! No, I
> don't believe that fictional characters are real...
Okay, good. Sorry. (Well, not really: who can keep
up with everything?)
> [My roommate] felt that Rand's idealization of reality
> in "Atlas Shrugged" carried a logical implication [about]
> her own moral character...
> When she allowed a whole lot of fictional characters
> ...to die, as a logical working out of her vision, then
> he concluded that her character was that of a murderer,
> even though [without killing] any actual person.
This has to be a bad error on at least two counts.
For one thing, humans are extremely complicated, and
it's completely uncertain whether they'd really go
through with some of their ideas. Moreover, it can
depend on circumstances and knowledge. Even Hitler,
who did go through with it, might not have if German
TV had been showing him on the nightly news the actual
pain written on actual faces of those being herded
aboard the cattle cars.
Second, authors like Rand and Brin (who you pointed
out killed trillions at the end of the Uplift novels)
are writing mostly to make a point. Being no expert
on Rand, I can suppose that she could kill off a lot
of people in her novels to show how well the world
would get along without them. The implication here
is only that all *those* people should come to their
senses, and start to contribute.
But most importantly, (as you agree), characters in
books and movies aren't real, and no matter whether
you talk of the torture of trillions or [boy am I
going to be in trouble for this if I'm wrong!!!]
whether I talk of the cruel, cruel, evil torture
of 10^10^10^10^10 people, it doesn't matter! Talk
and action are SOOO different.
The point of talk is exactly as it was when we first
sat around the campfires: planning, inspiration,
and learning.
Lee
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