(01-16-2014, 04:40 PM)Ildur Wrote:(01-16-2014, 02:55 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: The problem with judging the Elementals by human standards is that they're not human, and never will be. Â It'd be like judging a mountain lion by human standards. Â It doesn't work.
It is true that they own the Shroud and that Gridanians (or anyone else living in it) is a tenant. For that, it is perfectly reasonable for them to have rules and to frown upon people who break their stuff. What is not reasonable, however, is that their 'frown upon' is trying to murder people. This would be akin to the mountain lion trying to eat your neighbours for no reason at all or because it felt threatened by them. Your most likely course of action as a person would be to save the neighbour, not to stand idly and say "Well, he must have done something!" and let the lion eat him.
It'd be more akin to a mountain lion eating a person who it was leaving alone, but then the person started mucking around with its den area and was looking at its cubs. Â The mountain lion warned it a few times, but the person persisted.
Sure, I'd try to save them. Â But I'd also feel they had it coming for being a dipshit.
Quote:What we have to decide is if the Elementals are below humans, like the lion (in the sense that they have no rationality) or if they are above them, like gods. And then we have to wonder if they are good gods, because they certainly seem very fond on executing people without giving reasons more than "I'm threatened by him".
That's a false dichotomy. Â The example of a mountain lion was merely to illustrate that the Elementals don't have the same morals and values that we do, and that they may perceive things differently from the way we, as humans, view things.
Nature isn't human. Â Nature doesn't have our morals and values. Â Nature doesn't perceive us in the same way that we perceive ourselves. Â It doesn't love us the way that we love one another. Â It doesn't care about us the way we would care about our own. Â Nature is inhuman.
Now, inhuman doesn't necessarily equate to evil, but what it does mean is that what we perceive as cruel or unfair or unjust is not going to be perceived in the same manner.
It has nothing to do with whether the Elementals are "above or below" us. Â It has everything to do with the clash of human morals and values with the inhuman morals and values of what are essentially immortal, incorporeal beings whose first duty is to their own protection and the protection of the Twelveswood, not our well-being.
![[Image: hFalP38.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/hFalP38.jpg)
