On Jan 19, 2004, at 12:42 PM, Matthew Klahn wrote: > On Jan 19, 2004, at 11:09 , Noam Izenberg wrote: > >> It could be argued that until he went on the lam, Vlad's entire >> purpose was to throw other people's lives away (and to personally do >> the throwing whenever possible to further his own (at the time, >> rather limited) philosophy.... > Well, it could also be argued that those people were throwing their > own lives away, and that Vlad was just the mechanism. I don't think I can agree. The target of an assassination rarely _asks_ to be such a target. Knowing you're taking risks is one thing, but I'd bet most of them didn't think they were throwing their lives away until Vlad came knocking on their skull. > How is assassination different from rabble-rousing? Well, in one case, > you're enforcing someone else's will by choosing to off a person. In > the other case, you're being convinced that in order to make an > omelet, a few eggs need to be broken and that you, yourself, are an > egg that may be called upon to break yourself against a very hot > cast-iron pan that happens to have some oil, garlic and chives in it. I take your point. Possibly somewhat to the side. I think assassination is a) not risk free, and b) in young Vlad's case in particular the happy confluence of his personal philosophy and desire (kill Dragaerans) with that of the Organization (kill _specific_ Dragaerans). In this very simplistic way each was the other's tool in a mutually beneficial arrangement. That Vlad grew and changed speaks of his personal development as well as the external forces affecting him. > That is all to say, just to make things pretty unobsfucated, Vlad was > part of a system. Everyone else in the system knew that they were > doing things that require walking a pretty tight line. If you stray > from the extremely tight etiquette of the organization, you may get > finalized unless you're tough enough to fight it. So, in other words, > you're gonna reap what you sow if you piss someone off. If Vlad chose > to be a part of that system, that's not a good moral choice in my > world, but in his (that is, within the Jhereg), it was pretty normal. Here I disagree a bit also. Yes Vlad was part of the system for a while, but he didn't care for it in and of itself, and bought into it only so far as it fulfilled is somewhat narrow vision - until his eyes were forced ever more open by the events around him. He 'used' the Organization as much as it used him. For a while - actually several times - it looked to me like he had a serious death wish. He knew sometime he was going to get himself killed because he _wasn't_ going to walk the line forever. I had reached this conclusion before Teckla and Phoenix. > ...Now, whether that is true or not is up to debate, BUT, to create > conflict & violence to further your own ends at the expense of other > people's lives WHILE NOT putting yourself in the same risk is > synonymous with "evil" in my book. Heh. I think this is a bit of a quibble. Vlad was certainly putting himself at risk of his life or worse (and indeed 'worse' happened on a couple occasions). The risks and stakes were much smaller for Vlad (money and single lives) than for the revolutionaries (more money and more lives), but the morality of either can be looked at though several different color lenses and appear pretty much how you would like. Mean Bronze Rig (Noam R. Izenberg, 10-4)