fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, September 2, 2nd period]

Anakin walked into his classroom precisely on time and gave the students assembled there an appraising glance-as the door clicked shut behind him. "I'm Master Anakin Skywalker," he said in a voice that was intended to carry. "You may address me either as Master Skywalker or Professor Skywalker. This is Ethics, and we're going to skip the introductions--I'll figure out who you are, if I don't recognize you already--and move straight to our first discussion."

His cloak flared out behind him as he handed out the syllabus. "Today's topic," he said, pointing to the top of the page, "is self sacrifice: knowing the difference between saving people and being a pretentious twit."

Anakin wasn't a great believer in softening his language.

"Any time I ask a a group of people what they would do to save someone they love, they blither on about how they would set the world on fire, lie, cheat, steal, kill, die, et cetera, et cetera. I've been at this school five years now and realize that half of you have probably already been put into this situation. I'm never in a mood to hear adolescent ramblings about how wonderful you were or might hypothetically be."

He leaned back against his desk. "What I want to know is what would make you walk away. When do you decide that the risk isn't worth the cost?"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Like you wish you had a cool swirly cloak.

Take notes, pass notes, wonder how many hours he practiced to get his hair to look like that...

When wouldn't you consider stepping forward and sacrificing yourself? When do you decide that the risk isn't worth the cost? If it's not about you? If it doesn't involve people you know? If it's all so very far away?

Just how many pathological do-gooders did Anakin get in this semester's Ethics class?

[OOC: Make the threads messy, folks!]

Especially if you're interested in being a TA.

Yay ethics class!

Cara ~~has no cloak, Cara needs no cloak~~

Jason Todd

William Murdoch

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

However long Anakin had taken on his hair, Cara was of the opinion it was time wasted. It was even stupider than Richard's had looked when Zedd had dyed it blonde.

Considering that Cara still considered not being able to shoot Kahlan in the back that one time a personal failing... her reply of "Never." shouldn't have really been that surprising.

Thank you decade-and-a-half of brainwashing and indoctrination, as well as your good friend crippling self-worth issues.

Kennedy

Dana Scully

Wesley knew the answer right away, but it was not one that was going to cast him in a particularly flattering light.

"Well, I myself would be rather hard-pressed to identify a situtaion in which I would be inclined to sacrifice myself," he admitted. Then elaborated, "I - I used to be rather certain that if ever a threat arose against my Slayers - that is to say, the girls I was honor-bound to protect - that I would be willing to do whatever necessary to ensure their safety. However, the, er, reality of being present in a life-or-death situation is rather unnerving, and one's personal convictions do tend to go out the window when confronted with that."

Basically he was confessing that he chickened out. Smart, Wes. That should endear him to his professor.

Scully had her computer out and was typing away, vaguely wondering if some kind of superpower were used to swirl the cloak. Kind of like Raven's teleportation... thing.

Medusalith Amaquelin ~~needs no cloak, she has hair~~

Scully was still typing. It helped her think. What was giving up? And stepping away? And what wasn't?

Shot Mulder? (Otherwise he'd have murdered Krycek) Missy shot by Consortium? Didn't shoot Cardinale? (not that it mattered later) Testified before Senate idiots and passed out doing so? Shot by idiot co-worker? Stung by bee, woke up in Antarctica?

... came to Fandom, gave up job, enrolled as sophomore when circumstances became untenably dangerous on all counts?

Yes, that worked.

"When any attempt to, as you say, 'sacrifice' myself, would only be an attempt to prove I could do the job, when I clearly couldn't." Scully grimaced. "It's not about the perceived danger, but a realistic assessment of what I can accomplish. There's always a next time to follow up on. Not every situation is a last stand situation. There are others who may be more suited to fixing whatever is wrong."

Edited 2010-09-02 07:08 (UTC)

Considering that Medusalith's hair was, in every possible way, substantially superior to what any human's could ever hope to be, she gave no thought whatsoever to Anakin's hair. She did, however, note that human ethics seemed to be completely alien to Inhuman ethics. This class was going to be tricky, she suspected.

Kitty Pryde ~~whose uniform kinda rules, no cloak needed~~

Well, obviously, if her death would negatively impact her people. Like if it would make Crystalia first in line for the throne (and thank Agar there were Blackagar and Maximus between them and that) or something. It would also be inexcusable to allow her death to end her family's genetic cache (in which case she supposed Crystalia would already be dead, which would take the 'Crystalia as queen' concern out of the equation), but that fell, also, under the category of 'negatively impacting her people.' But she was supposed to be German, so she supposed she couldn't say that.

This was all very trying sometimes.

She supposed she could be more general about it.

"If my sacrifice would ultimately negatively impact my people and society as a whole, I would obviously refrain from doing so."

The mention of sacrifice immediately brought to mind, for William, the notion of the sacrifice. It had been drilled in to him from rather a young age that self-sacrifice was something of a virtue, although he suspected that the concept was not meant to be taken literally, at least in the case of your average man.

"I should think I would cease if the odds of my sacrifice achieving my goal were rather narrow. If I fail, I've only made things worse for whomever I'm trying to save, and then I will no longer be around to help them. If I wait, perhaps in time there will be another, better option worth taking." William wasn't overly fond of failure, or of rushing in to things.

Jason thought about the question for a minute, trying to reconcile Robin training with his own ideas.

"If by sacrificing myself, you mean dying...then I think right there, the cost is too great, unless I was saving a lot of people in the process. Dying to save a few people versus living and getting to protect a lot more people in the future--it's not even a question. It does suck a lot when you can't save everyone though."

It had been a while since Jason had seen Wesley, and he felt kind of bad about that, so he was glad they had a class together.

"Have you ever been in a life-or-death situation?" he asked. "'Cause it's hard to know how you'd really handle that kind of confrontation until you've been in a moment like that."

Alice Cullen

"If it wasn't going to save my family," Alice said. "If one of us was in danger and it wasn't going to save us or help at least someone get out of it."

Bella was the one who'd probably be sacrificing herself needlessly, thank you very much.

"Or else if it wouldn't help the situation in general. One more dead person is one less living person to try and figure it out."

Not that she was alive. Pfft, details.

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Ethics [Thursday, September 2, 2nd period]

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