fandomhigh | Ethics [Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 1st period]

"Good morning," Anakin said, sweeping into the classroom where the students had been assigned seats. "I'm Anakin Skywalker and this is Ethics. If you're in the wrong place, now's the time to get up and flee."

If you were in the right place, it wasn't bad advice either, depending on Anakin's mood. He paced in front of their desks as he spoke, Jedi robe swirling behind him. "Most classes this week focus on introductions, but there are a few familiar faces in the classroom already and I'll figure out the rest of you as we go along. Fandom, as you might have realized already, is a multi-dimensional nexus where beings from many different places and times come together." He made sure to look each student in the eyes as he spoke. "As such, what you may feel to be moral and immoral might be completely different than the person sitting next to you. I encourage discussion, even heated discussion, but it must be phrased in a constructive way. Responses like 'yes, but that's dumb,' 'yes, but you're dumb', or punching someone are not constructive."

He'd done all of those before, but this wasn't about the ethics of the Ethics teacher.

"I have no problem at all sending you to detention if you irritate me," he concluded. "Now, the unpleasant administrative things out of the way, let's start with our first ethical scenario: If you had to choose between killing one person in order to save five others, or doing nothing even though you know that doing nothing means that those five people would die before your eyes, what would you do? And what do you think would be the right thing to do?"

His eyes slid to Katniss ~~assuming she was there~~. "We touch on unpleasant subjects in this class, some of which might not be all that hypothetical to your life's experience," he added. "If you prefer not to discuss a particular scenario, just let me know by shaking your head and I'll skip you until the next week."

Anakin clasped his hands together. "Now, let's begin."

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"Not really," Anakin replied, "but I'm not the one who has to answer the question."

"Fair enough," Rosella allowed with a magnanimous nod. "But, yes, in real life, the details of the people in question....nay, the details of why I was in such a ghastly situation to begin with, would be incredibly important. I would certainly do what I could to find a different solution where perhaps no one would get hurt, but I also realize that, sometimes, a sacrifice must be made. However, I feel that Ethics, in my experience, has been less of a study of what one might actually do, and more of a study in how people expect you to think. With the information given, yes, I would kill one person to save five. And I would deem anyone who would save the one at the expense of the others to be either incredibly wasteful or pathetically lazy."

"This class is slightly different," Anakin replied. "I have no interest in making sure you're all in agreement, marching toward some singular thought of what could be moral. I just want you to think of what you'd do, and see if you can live with that choice."

"I like to think," said Rosella thoughtfully, "that if I could not live with my choices, I would not bother to make them. And actually making a choice is far different from discussing how one might hypothetically postulate on the choices they may make should they possibly be in a certain situation. A scholar behind his books is far different from a man in front of his fate."

"We'll do some real world scenarios too," Anakin assured her.

"Real world scenarios?" asked Rosella, eying Anakin a bit oddly now; in fact, she looked as though she might be turning a little sick with the implications her mind was providing for her. "How real would could a scenario constructed for a class really be? Do you intend to line us up and threaten to decimate us if a chosen individual does not make a choice? Such a situation would be the only where the true nature of our ethics could be displayed."

She should....really just be quiet and take the class for what it was, but now Rosella was all riled up, and she had difficulty keeping her mouth shut once it was open.

~~Not dirty?~~

Ethics [Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 1st period]

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Re: Answer the discussion question! [8/30]