fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, October 8, 1st period]

"I trust that all of you survived your weekend with your relatives mostly intact," Anakin said, sweeping into the room precisely on time. "Today we talk about something called the Golden Rule, a concept which unites many separate religions on this planet," he said, leaning against his desk and stared around the classroom. "It sounds altruistic: 'do unto others as you would have done unto you', but there's a couple of logical flaws in it. What if you don't mind getting poked in the stomach? Does it follow that you could wander around aimlessly poking people? What if you don't see what's wrong with stealing? Or killing? Or hating entire groups of people on principle? If the practical application is supposed to be you randomly help people because they could be good, wouldn't the opposite be that you could randomly harm people because they might be evil?"

He shrugged. "I suppose the Golden Rule could be broken down to 'be nice to people, and they'll be nice to you' but out here in the real world, we all know it doesn't exactly work like that, and the concept could also be reinterpreted as 'it doesn't bother me, so why does it bother you?' Is this a case of aiming for an ideal and hoping that it will cause a ripple effect of positive things, or something overly simplistic that taken to its logical extreme renders itself useless? Has seeing it on everything from coffee mugs to tea towels made the very idea of it trite, or does it still have a place in the mind of someone trying to lead an ethical life?"

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Bobby actually had to make the effort to make sure that there was no literal ice to accompany his tone when he replied. "There's always gonna be some assholes in the world who hate people for stupid reasons, reasons that maybe these people don't have control over. And they're the kind of people who'll go around saying 'oh, I'd never cross the line and do something against the law', well that's sure convenient when the law doesn't have anything in place to protect those others, isn't it?"

Anakin was a little surprised by the vehemence in Bobby's voice, but that didn't show on his face. "So they interpret the phrase to mean 'do unto other people like me what I want, but the rest don't count'?"

Anakin had a feeling that Bobby fell squarely into the persecuted minority.

He did, though he wore the fact that he didn't look like someone who'd have reason to ever experience persecution like protective armor of a sort.

"Exactly. And then, of course, sometimes the people who had all the bad crap piled on them are just gonna go 'hey, you treated me like crap, so obviously I can do the same to you'. Which the first group is just gonna take as proof that they were right all along, and it'll just... cycle."

Ethics [Thursday, October 8, 1st period]

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