Friday, February 24, 2012

Are kittens evil?

Are kittens evil? Well that makes for an interesting pun in Japanese because Kawaii (cute) sounds just like Kowai (frightening). So even though Ratman may work for an “evil” organization, they still play with kittens. Thus the heroes, the so called “good guys” will end up being pompous, arrogant self-righteous fools. Then there will be the good natured klutz that always makes things worse even though they have the best of intentions.
It’s just a small change of viewpoint required to allow a “good” nation to declare war on an “evil” one. Once you have those distinctions it is easy to justify breaking any on the Ten Commandments, and say “I am excused”. They are my evil enemy so it’s OK for me to steal, kill, rape and pillage. When you have done that enough to be the winner then you can wright the history books and tell the whole world how “good” you were. After all isn’t it obvious that they suffered more from Original Sin than me?
Then what are “good” and “evil” but labels? They might easily be replaced with "Us" and "Them". The protagonist is always "good" they are one of "Us". Tales are always told from the point of view of the winners and of course they will portray themselves as the good guys.
After changing to “us” and “them” you can use the power of Empathy to transmogrify the titles to “them” and “us”.  Now with a change of perspective the “good guys” are evil. They are powerful bullies that blew up my home and destroyed my business. All my friends and business associates are in their prison and I no longer have a safe place to raise a family. They are a chaotic force that upset all my plans and go out of their way to make my life miserable. I’m also curious about how we decide who is “Us” and who is “Them” But I’ll muse more on that later.
So what do you think; Are kittens frighteningly cute? Or are they the embodiment of evil overlords hiding under a fluffy coat?

3 comments:

  1. Ankaiser from ratman in that case would have a interesting back story, in chapter 19 the have him walk into a boxing gym with more of a good guy feeling that everyone there looks up to and enjoys the company of, but every other time we see him its from an evil prospective (obviously this evil view is from our good guy, who is himself in an evil organization).

    Also as u were saying bout the possibility of the kittens being evil, then we have to ask are the so called evil organization who u said were playing with then actually playing with them or is the evil being whom resides inside this kawaii/kowai (<-- not telling u they cute or scary, u can decide that on your own) little fur ball there of its own will or just stuck and they are just tormenting the poor demonic thingy?

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  2. On the other hand you could say that this makes Ankaiser human, not a one dimensional image built out of facts but somebody who gets emotional and may change their mind.

    Take anybody in the world, Hitler for example. There were actually people that liked him, a lot of them in fact. Just because somebody is your enemy and you despise then doesn't mean that everybody else feels the same way. The opposite is true.
    There will be somebody that hates your mum, not matter how much you love and respect here there are others who wouldn't give her the time of day.

    As for the kittens, that's an outlook I didn't think of. I was more focused on the juxtaposition of scary skeletons playing with cute kittens. But it takes all sorts to make the world go round, I wonder who the people are that think of kittens as scary and skeletons cute?

    And isn't it annoying to be up-to-date with web comics?

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  3. yes emotions and memories are what makes us human, not just the physical form in which we reside. without our alternating opinions we might as well be a single form.

    it's true that in a scenario person a might like person b, but person c might dislike b. this is just a way we deal with things as no one can please everyone. iv often had friends talking about other friends of mine in slightly uncalled for ways, it's not a feature specific to a few people.

    unfortunately we don't have enough people who just don't care and can get over having to express their hate and try to convince others the same.

    i try to do that but i can only see that whatever i say will cause one person to hate and other to like. fix for the problem, avoid communication, but that is never going to happen so there in lies the problem of requiring a majority of people to throw away advanced social standing and just enjoy what comes our way :D.

    didn't mean to focus my reply on this topic but i found it interesting, don't hate me for it because its who i am.

    p.s. i just happened to be glancing over the new manga chapters and found it, and the next 2 chapters are out :D enjoy. lol

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