Post by whitewolfstark on Apr 9, 2016 23:37:43 GMT
GRRM provides for us a moral dilemma of the fact that the Masters of Mereen have killed and crucified 163 slave children, and in turn Dany crucifies 163 Masters.
What are your thoughts on the dilemma? Did Dany make the right choice or the wrong one in your estimation? While the show I believe tries to paint it as a "badass" move, it instead always strikes me as a moment where Dany goes a step too far, and shows her potential (when her blood is up) to be a destroyer of worlds.
This touches upon what the word "justice" means, and how often it can be misappropriated for revenge and retribution quite often.
This confusion I believe comes from the two conflating streams of thought in Western Civilization. Largely the difference between Grecco-Roman ideas of justice, which involved secular law traditions, and the Judeo-Christian tradition which itself was bi-polar between Old Testament wrath and revenge (to grossly over-simplify the divine justice often characterized of that portion of the bible), and New Testament mercy and turn the other cheek philosophy.
As such, the confusion is understandable, but the answer to each is different depending upon who you ask and what stream of thought from Western Civilization that's being subconsciously tapped into.
The Grecco-Roman standard comes from the Greek myths surrounding the House of Atreus--which experienced its own Game of Thrones-like bloody history of intrigue, incest, and murder, all culminating to blood vengeance killing after blood vengeance killing. The way the long string of such acts come to an end is with Orestes, who is caught in the guilt of all guilts of having killed his mother, Clytemnestra, (who had killed his father--and therefore he was obligated to kill the murderer of his father, Agamemnon), but she had killed her husband in the first place for sacrificing their daughter, who had been sacrificed in the first place because Agamemnon had upset the Gods and they demanded blood retribution. Add to it that Clytemnestra was being egged on by Aegyptus, whose father had been killed by Agamemnon's father (and those two being brothers). I think you get the point. A long line of blood killings and swearing oaths on dead father's graves to avenge them through more death and killings was the status quo, culminating in Orestes. Orestes is condemned for killing his mother by the Furies who plague him. Orestes seeks out Apollo for help, Apollo distracts the Furies and tells Orestes to hot foot it to Athens and plead his case before Athena.
What follows is the mythological explanation for every courtroom drama ever since. Orestes pleads his case to Athena, she agrees to hold a trial on the matter, and to act as judge, but calls forth a jury.
So on and so forth, eventually Athena declares that since Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon, her death has less value than that of Agamemnon's, and as such Orestes is absolved of the Furies pursuing him for all his life for that crime and allowed to move on with his life after the acquittal. The Furies lament that mothers are getting the raw deal, that the death of the mother should count less than the father, but since Athena states that she was born of no mother, it will not hold her sway and since the jury was otherwise hung without her adding her vote for acquittal, she says that all juries that end in a hung manner, should end with the defendant being left off the hook and absolved of the crime.
The Furies are then forced by Athena to transform into the Eumenides, and the play ends with the clear indication that a new social order and definition of justice is defined and a new social contract agreed upon that murders should not be answered by blood oaths sworn at father's graves, but instead with trials held by the "state". And so blood vengeance gives way to trial by jury.
The TV show plays with this idea next season, but here it is only beginning to toy with such notions.
What are your thoughts?
What are your thoughts on the dilemma? Did Dany make the right choice or the wrong one in your estimation? While the show I believe tries to paint it as a "badass" move, it instead always strikes me as a moment where Dany goes a step too far, and shows her potential (when her blood is up) to be a destroyer of worlds.
This touches upon what the word "justice" means, and how often it can be misappropriated for revenge and retribution quite often.
This confusion I believe comes from the two conflating streams of thought in Western Civilization. Largely the difference between Grecco-Roman ideas of justice, which involved secular law traditions, and the Judeo-Christian tradition which itself was bi-polar between Old Testament wrath and revenge (to grossly over-simplify the divine justice often characterized of that portion of the bible), and New Testament mercy and turn the other cheek philosophy.
As such, the confusion is understandable, but the answer to each is different depending upon who you ask and what stream of thought from Western Civilization that's being subconsciously tapped into.
The Grecco-Roman standard comes from the Greek myths surrounding the House of Atreus--which experienced its own Game of Thrones-like bloody history of intrigue, incest, and murder, all culminating to blood vengeance killing after blood vengeance killing. The way the long string of such acts come to an end is with Orestes, who is caught in the guilt of all guilts of having killed his mother, Clytemnestra, (who had killed his father--and therefore he was obligated to kill the murderer of his father, Agamemnon), but she had killed her husband in the first place for sacrificing their daughter, who had been sacrificed in the first place because Agamemnon had upset the Gods and they demanded blood retribution. Add to it that Clytemnestra was being egged on by Aegyptus, whose father had been killed by Agamemnon's father (and those two being brothers). I think you get the point. A long line of blood killings and swearing oaths on dead father's graves to avenge them through more death and killings was the status quo, culminating in Orestes. Orestes is condemned for killing his mother by the Furies who plague him. Orestes seeks out Apollo for help, Apollo distracts the Furies and tells Orestes to hot foot it to Athens and plead his case before Athena.
What follows is the mythological explanation for every courtroom drama ever since. Orestes pleads his case to Athena, she agrees to hold a trial on the matter, and to act as judge, but calls forth a jury.
So on and so forth, eventually Athena declares that since Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon, her death has less value than that of Agamemnon's, and as such Orestes is absolved of the Furies pursuing him for all his life for that crime and allowed to move on with his life after the acquittal. The Furies lament that mothers are getting the raw deal, that the death of the mother should count less than the father, but since Athena states that she was born of no mother, it will not hold her sway and since the jury was otherwise hung without her adding her vote for acquittal, she says that all juries that end in a hung manner, should end with the defendant being left off the hook and absolved of the crime.
The Furies are then forced by Athena to transform into the Eumenides, and the play ends with the clear indication that a new social order and definition of justice is defined and a new social contract agreed upon that murders should not be answered by blood oaths sworn at father's graves, but instead with trials held by the "state". And so blood vengeance gives way to trial by jury.
The TV show plays with this idea next season, but here it is only beginning to toy with such notions.
What are your thoughts?