Dreams of the Enemy

So, who else doesn’t really like all of the generic evil villains out there these days? For a lot of games, it’s enough just to have a villain that is simply evil. Not morally gray, not well intentioned, just evil. Same goes for movies… as far as one can tell, Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars is evil for the hell of it. Really, what does he want? Because “power for its own sake” is about the only answer visible.

Building a massive planet-crushing Death Star and destroying a civilian pacifist planet is another excellent example of what I’m talking about. What point was there to that, beyond just being evil for the hell of it? Try this plotline: Empire captures princess, puts her in Star Destroyer prison cells. Rescue team saves princess, but Empire plants tracking device on their ship.

About the only differences are: the Empire has a lot less ill will (you know, that whole not-blowing-up-a-planet deal) and a lot more Star Destroyers, since they have a lot more resources to spare. The other problem, though, is that it’s less dramatic, which is why in Star Wars the villains needed to be over-the-top; why they needed to be purely evil for its own sake.

It gets old after a while, though. Why doesn’t Team Rocket from Pokémon go into the mechanized construction business? With the number of robots they’ve built for the sake of screwing with Ash and friends, they clearly have the aptitude for it. And they wouldn’t have to go blasting off all the time. I guess it’s just not evil enough (or funny enough) for them to make an honest living and send money and Pokémon to Giovanni that way.

It certainly seems in a few different cases that there’s no internally consistent reason for the villains to act the way they do. The demands of producing an interesting movie or TV show, the demands of drama or comic relief, are the reasons for creating villains that act in these ways. But treating those stories as worlds in their own respect forces the view that they’re acting evil for the hell of it. That the villains have no goals beyond being the antagonists; that the dreams of the enemy are non-existent. And people don’t usually act that way.

So it’s awfully refreshing once in a while to get a series like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s. As the series opens, the antagonists seem pretty clearly marked. You know, those guys over there that are the guardians of the Book of Darkness. That cursed book that has never been used for anything other than destruction. That tome that will gain limitless power once all 666 pages have been completed. Frankly, at first, it’s a little bit of a cliché storm. (link to TVTropes)

But, much like the first season does, it doesn’t remain clichéd for long. The motivations of the “villains” are laid bare before the season is half over; the dreams of the enemy are apparent to at least the viewer, if not the protagonists. And the master of the Book of Darkness isn’t the textbook villain lusting after power; likewise, the guardians aren’t just the textbook mini-boss squad that seems to gain nothing from being evil. Oh no.

In fact, they’re about as far from that as it’s possible to be. In a refreshing turn from the standard “bwa ha ha I’m evil and I like it” villain, the master of the Book Of Darkness specifically ordered the guardians not to go out and complete the book. She hardly qualifies as an antagonist, and even if one did try to fit her into that category, she’s definitely not seeking “power after power, ceasing only in death,” as Hobbes put it. (Yeah, I can reference political theory too.)

But then, why are the guardians completing the Book? Clearly they must be more typical villains, right? Well, actually… no. Actually, their leader accepted that order fully and completely. Until they learned that the Book of Darkness was killing its master through a curse, one that would lose effect if the Book was completed. Yes, that’s right: they’re acting as they are to save their master’s life.

What does this mean? People aren’t usually mindless drones that are only supposed to act as the antagonist for some greater story, and it’s nice to see a story that reflects that fact. Although they do exist, it’s the rare person that really does act evil for the hell of it. In the world that we live in, everyone has some kind of dream or goal. Even one’s enemy or opponent has their own wishes and desires. Sometimes, those are even noble ones.

It’s all too easy to look at an opponent and dismiss them as nothing more than an object. Nothing more than an enemy to defeat, even to kill. But that’s not what people are like. When war breaks out, the dead are reduced to numbers and the enemy is reduced to just some monolithic force that must be defeated in battle. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the people behind all of those numbers and uniforms.

Note, I’m not saying that war as a whole is wrong because of this. Unfortunately, sometimes force is the only solution to an opponent who carries a destructive dream. But there must be that awareness of the opponent’s status as a human being. And that awareness is one of the things that will help to ensure that we go no farther than we must.

Why the Importance of Peace is Overstated

It's not the second part of The Growth of High Technology, but I'm working on that. It'll be here eventually.

Possible spoilers from Star Wars: Episode III (as if anyone hasn’t seen that movie), Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, and a book titled Epic.

Peace, stability, security. All sound like important goals. Especially peace; right now in the U.S. political climate, there’s a massive debate on the subject, especially as it relates to the war in Iraq. People tend to view peace as superior to war, and I can’t say I entirely disagree with that idea.

Yet I also believe that there are things more important that peace or stability. Which doesn’t mean that I think war is a good thing, but sometimes, it’s better than the peaceful, stable alternative. And frankly, Star Wars is probably too obvious of an example of that.

After all, when Chancellor Palpatine made his speech before the Senate about what the Jedi had done and announced the formation of the Empire, he emphasized the positive to an extent. He spoke of ensuring the security and continuing stability, along with the justification, “for a safe and secure society.” And with all due respect, I can’t say that the Empire wasn’t a stable, secure government.

If the priority of a populace is on peace and stability, they might get just that. And indeed, for the decade and more that the Empire reigned supreme, I have no doubt that the vast majority of the Empire lived in what could be called peace. They weren’t living in fear of the Separatist droid armies or some other major threat. For most, the idea that there were stormtroopers was probably viewed as a good thing; after all, said forces would protect the people from outside threats.

And yet, who can call the Empire a good society? If the standard used is the presence of a peaceful, stable, secure society for the majority of people, then by that standard, the Empire is a good society. The standard used, however, is flawed, for a number of different reasons.

The first of those is the importance placed on peace. As was expressed in the Gundam Wing movie, Endless Waltz, “peace is not something that is just given to you.” People cannot sit back and wait for peace to arrive, and people cannot ignore the fact that there will be threats in the world. Pacifism is a lofty ideal, but as the movie demonstrated, it can only work when every single person in the world is a pacifist.

If a government disarms completely or nearly so, as the Earth Sphere Unified Nation did, they become a target. There was no one capable of fighting the army that landed and took control. And that shows why peace must take a backseat to preparation. A nation or a group of people that cannot defend itself against groups that have no desire for peace is a nation that will fall to such groups.

In addition, the presence of weapons that can be used for war is not an assured war. Peace can be maintained even in the presence of weapons. Disarmament is not a path to peace any more than maintaining weapons is a path to war. In the end, the presence or absence of a peaceful society will be decided by the people of that society. If the people either place too much importance on military power or on the absence of such weapons, the ability to maintain peace will be severely hindered.

The importance of stability in that standard is also a problem. Certainly, stability is often preferable to the alternative. That said, though, if the choice is between a stable Empire and an unstable civil war between the Empire and the Rebellion, who can say that they’d prefer the stability? Sometimes, action must be taken. Justice carries more importance than stability.

One book I’ve read, titled Epic, is another excellent example of how the ideals of peace and stability can be seriously misused. In the world that the book describes, a person’s life is all but dependent on their ability in the game world, Epic, that everyone in the world participates in. Any physical violence in the real world is a crime punishable with immediate exile. Legal challenges and many other issues are resolved through player-vs-player combat in the arena. And unsurprisingly, those people in charge of this society are the ones with the best players.

Thus, any challenge to the decisions of the central ruling committee ends in combat against them, which inevitably results in death. In essence, that committee can do anything, and no one can argue. And when the main characters of the novel earn enough money to become a threat to this committee’s characters, one of the rulers of this society lectures his fellows, “We preside over a society of what, five million souls? A peaceful society, a stable society. And what keeps it so? Epic. […] A better system of government has rarely been achieved. Certainly the warfare that our ancestors fled has no possibility of appearing.”

Again, I see the importance placed on peace and stability, on the lack of any physical violence. And yet. The people of that world are ruled over by an oligarchy that cares nothing for their welfare. Anyone who defies the government dies, even if that death is only in a virtual world. Is this a good society, or one that deserves to be ranked high?

In the end, the message I can find in all of these different worlds is much the same as the one that motivated the creation of the Declaration of Independence. “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Sometimes, peace and stability isn’t enough. People deserve more than just stability.

And if the choice is between a stable, peaceful rule by a government that ignores the ideals of justice and liberty and an unstable time of war to overthrow such a government, then I say: let there be war.