fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, September 30]

Anakin had backed himself up against his desk looking a little hunted as a unicorn talked to him. "You're so tall," it was saying happily. "And have such nice blue eyes--"

"Um, right," he said, turning his attention to the class. "Everyone look under your chairs, please," he said. A third of the students ~~going by how they sign into class~~ would find a bag with a full-sized chocolate bar waiting for them. A third would find a bag with a fun-sized chocolate bar. A third would find nothing at all.

"Oooh, chocolate!" the unicorn squealed. "That's so nice!"

Anakin ignored the unicorn as he waited for whatever grumbling there might be to subside. "Anyone feeling a little ripped off right now?" he asked rhetorically. "Two minutes ago no one had any candy and everyone was fine. Now I haven't taken anything away from anyone, no one's any worse off than they were when they walked in the door, and some of you are thinking very nasty things about me. Some of you have more than you did when you came into the classroom and still feel like you've been given an unfair deal."

"That's really smart," the unicorn commented.

Anakin moved on. "Isn't envy fun? Under its grip we never concentrate on the gifts we have been given."

"Like your hair," the unicorn added.

"Instead we focus on what others have that we want," Anakin said as his cheeks heated. "It's entirely a question of attitude. Today's question: how would someone capitalize on that very human failing if they were seeking to manipulate others?"

He looked around. "And where did that rainbow come from?"

The unicorn looked embarrassed.

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That earned a momentary upward twitch of Jonothon's eyebrow, but then he turned his gaze back downward and shrugged it off.

//That isn't so much envy as it is desperation,// he noted. //But th'steps, I suppose, are th'same. Though... I think envy would probably lend itself better toward turning two of yer enemies against one another, if we get right down to it. This one has a bigger, shinier toy than you've got. What're you gonner do about it, mm?//

"It is rooted in envy," Rosalind disagreed. "Want."

She lifted her shoulders slightly--not enough to be called a shrug.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," she replied. "In that case, I would be very careful of who else they might be able to overcome their enmity enough to work together against you."

//When it's a matter of family, Rosalind, it isn't envy. It's love.//

Jono's family kind of sucked at that one. A lot. But he was still willing to stand by the principle of the matter all the same.

//As for th'rest...// He shrugged. //I never said it wasn't dangerous to do. If yer going to try to manipulate people, then you certainly have to be competent enough to be aware of the actions of those that yer trying to manipulate.//

That said, Jono wasn't much of a manipulator. He rather preferred to either sit on the sidelines, or else break lamps over the heads of people trying to kill him. One of those.

She was giving him her best are you stupid? look. Oh Jono, pay attention.

"To the one using the family by holding it hostage it is still envy," or greed, or orders, "motivating them to do such a thing. I said nothing about the actions of the victim who wants nothing more than their family back." You moron.

There you go, Jono. Rosalind was mad at you.

Which left Jono sitting there, giving her his best 'and now I am wondering if you've completely lost your mind' look.

//Well then, it would seem that we've miscommunicated,// he replied, levelly. //My apologies.//

At least, he supposed, he was willing to admit when he'd made a mistake. Which was not going to stop him from kicking the unicorn that was trying to compliment him on his sense of humility full in the arse.

"Accepted," she said, with great dignity, but still definite coolness.

Yeah. Sorry?

Jono eyed her for a moment more, and then gave his head a shake.

//Neither of us actually specified,// he noted, evenly, //just whose point of view we were speaking from. People are easily manipulated when they want something that's been taken from them. And so I assumed we were speaking about th'victim. But I can see yer point as well. That a person driven by envy and greed will do... very questionable things, in order to get something that they didn't have before.//

He wasn't one to drop intellectual conversation so easily. Particularly not if he could pick out just where the misstep had been made.

//Yer point makes more sense than mine, ultimately. But in that situation, it isn't th'hostage taker who is being manipulated, either. Which was where I got confused.//

It was very tempting to ignore him. Rosalind wasn't, erm, particularly forgiving. So, still very cool.

"The hostage taker is being manipulated by their own needs, not by outside influences," or they could be, but that was an added level of manipulation Rosalind wasn't going to bring up at the moment, "and they are the one doing the manipulation in this scenario. The victim can only do what they're being manipulated for unless their family bond is not so strong."

Some people would choose themselves over their family. Rosalind... wasn't one of them.

And some people didn't have family to worry about in the first place. Or, at least, family that cared enough to bother keeping in touch, even before their son had managed to blow a whole in himself and level half a building while he was at it.

//It makes for a few levels of manipulation, in the end,// he noted. //I suppose, in the end, it all boils down to th'same thing. Find something that a person believes they have an immediate need for, and there's a chance that they could be driven to do some very... desperate things.//

"That," she said, "we can agree on."

Though Rosalind strongly wondered how far their definitions of desperate differed and that made her feel a bit--awkward.

And Jono as well, but only if he let himself think on it too thoroughly.

He had a good many other things on his mind today. And so he was going to let the conversation end with a nod, a bit of a fidget, and then some more awkward poking at the chocolate that he couldn't eat.

Ethics [Thursday, September 30]

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