But there we come again in the case of how to deal with criminals
I have not liked the EFT episode in which the young girl executed two UW soldiers
From there I have the following doubts :
- Having the girl execute the 2 UW soldiers was to extreme ... but I understand that your objective is to provoke reactions and see if we can gear our brain to think about it
Nobody "had" Emily execute the criminals--not Reggie, not anyone (except me, sort of). Emily was given their lives to do with whatever she chose. She could have given them cookies and milk and set them free. Instead, she opted to shot them.
This has created controversy on non-Big Head lists, as well. Some people are furious with me. But in all cases, they missed the explicitly stated point of the exercise. That is: You, and only you, are responsible for the consequences of your acts. You cannot fob it off on anyone else.
The subordinate execution was way to harsh since independently of what he could do, someone would have pressed the button ... or does the rest of the crew was guilty has they failed to restraint the Admiral ?
No, there is a big difference between sins of omission and sins of commission. No one is under any moral compulsion to
prevent a crime by another (unless they have agreed to do so). For example, under Anglo-American jurisprudence, I could be walking beside a river, carrying a life preserver tied to a rope. If a canoe with a small child capsized in front of me and the child can not swim, I would be under no legal nor moral obligation to lift a finger to save the kid. (There is one exception, but it does not change the basic scenario.)
If the gunner had refused to fire, someone else
might have. However, that in no way exonerates the gunner who did pull the trigger. He turned the victims' death from a possibility into a certainty.
Maybe the storyline could have explored another path (dare me suggest) of the criminal paying back the victim through forced labour...
Yeah, it
could have explored that or I could have explored how pixie dust helps Tinkerbelle to fly, or any number of other possibilities. I chose to explore individual responsibility. I'm the writer, so I get to do that. Feel free to write your own story.
Interestingly enough, one of my critics did just that. He wrote a little scenario about Harris hiring an advocate, selection of a judge, and some ridiculous hypothetical reasons why the Admiral's attack
might have been legitimate and therefore, creating the need for all the legalistic hoopla. It sucked as a story, but more importantly, it totally trivialized the enormity of the crime and the underlying moral premise.
But don't worry, an anarchist "trial" will be featured in an upcoming story. I have the feeling, though, that it will
really piss off some of my critics. I sure hope so.
