https://boards.4chan.org/co/thread/147501777#p147501777
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5DZexDYyuU
5d ago
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/co/ - I don't get it. Was Rorschach the bad guy at the end
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.webp?h=10 "Nuzzles, pounces on you, UwU, you're so warm!..")
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!carlos
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Yes. Rosharch was obviously the bad guy in the end, because he was more obsessed with his own personal morality in the face of defeat than he was with saving whatever remained. The problem with Rosharch and his morality at the end of the day is that he would rather the whole world burn to ashes than for it to escape and prosper beyond the range of his own moral judgement. He has already determined that the world in its current form is not worth saving. That he is doing the right thing in the face of the inevitable, and that it never mattered whether his actions made a difference or not, whether they actually improved things or made them worse, only that he could go on with a clear righteous conscience.
Rorsharch is the personification of Kant's moral man. Somebody who can never lie, who can never do the unethical thing. The problem that we see with Kant's morality becomes visible quiet easily, in that society only acts as a template for man's morality and is itself never perfect, and if a man were to fully embrace a "perfect morality" with no exceptions, then that man has resigned himself to absurdities so extreme as to make life impossible to function or even survive till the end of the day. Morality is not what is absolutely right, but rather an approximation of what man has determined is right based on generations of experiences, and thus is a necessary act of perfection not meant to be followed in its absolute form, but rather as closely as possible without falling into complete absurdities that go on to destroy and undermine the very structure that a morality is meant to protect.
In the case of Rosharch he is unable to move beyond his own morality and ideals, even when faced with the fact that doubling down any further only makes the world a worse place from the point where the Villain has already won, and the only thing Rorsharch can change now is whether to let the Villain fail in hiding the truth and let the world end, or for Rorsharch to give up on his truth and let the world live. Rorsharch chooses his truth and thus leaves the world worse for it, forcing anyone who believes in the value of the world and society itself existing irrespective of how the foundations are formed, to choose to kill Rorsharch in turn.
What the confrontation between Rorsharch and Dr. Manhattan does is make us the reader choose between the morality of an individual perspective and the morality of a large picture perspective. To question up to what point it is acceptable to condemn an entire civilization for past and current wrongs, upto what point it is better to say let it all burn rather than to give up on a core value, and up to what extent it is okay to sacrifice "good men" in the context of following the rules and morality inculcated by their society to ensure that society can continue to live and move forward for one more day.
Rorsharch is the soldier and Dr. Manhattan is the general. The soldier is consumed by the traumas of the war he has been fighting long enough that he no longer remembers home and his entire life is consumed by the need to destroy the enemy, meanwhile Dr. Manhattan knows that they have reached the point of Mutually Assured Destruction in their fight against their adversary, and so tells the soldier not to fire even though the enemy is right in front of him. There is no doubt that the soldier has served his nation honestly, done everything he can to defend the land, yet he is at the precipice, where continuing to follow his nature is only going to lead to further destruction, akin to a soldier unwilling to surrender even after the war has ended, and even after his own government has told him to surrender. It is at this point that Dr. Manhattan has no choice but to court Martial ( kill ) the soldier, and live with the burden of his decision to kill loyal men, who remained loyal to the ideal long after the nation itself has outgrown it. In a way it is the death of outdated tradition in the face of progress, the death of certain traditional values that were once celebrated, now turning out to be a net negative when compared to new ideas and values. Dr. Manhattan killing Rorsharch is not just the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, but the death of an idealized past to embrace a more utilitarian future, new paradigms that would actually allow the world to keep running in the face of finding news ways of killing itself every century.
In conclusion:
Rorsharch was a good man outside of his time. A soldier unwilling to surrender, finding himself with the responsibilities of a general, without the necessary experience and competencies to make the best decisions in such a role. Rosharchs death was the death of an idealized past, that had remained so long that it wasn't just holding back the future, but actively sabotaging it towards a bitter end. A moral man unable to come to terms with the fact that his morality that once all would have celebrated has turned out to be the wrong choice that makes the world a worse place. He is the WW2 American veteran who has just liberated a concentration camp, and is now cheering with his comrades as he sends the gays back behind the fence, and now finds himself still alive in modern times being told that not voting for gay marriage and being disgusted by his gay neighbor makes him a bad man, angry and outraged and unwilling to change his views to keep up with a society that has found his status changed from a moral hero to an immoral degenerate, meanwhile he has not changed at all in his values and is still the same man he always was.
!effortposters !mottezans !superheroes !philosophers
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!philosophers KILL THE UTILITARIAN!!
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Watch me make the decision that is actually useful and improves things.
Shut the frick up continental r-slurs. Analytical philosophy symbols telling me to build roads to improve travel go brrr.
We will make things subjectively better, call them objectively better, and raise points on an arbitrary total happiness index connected to GDP growth, and you will like it!
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You're the kind of guy who would torture a baby if it meant saving a dozen people.
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You think this is some sort of got ya don't ya. You don't even realize utilitarianism accounts for maximizing utility, including in the long term and across time and space, and does not discriminate against the utility that comes with people believing they are the good guys. It would also account for whether one is surrounded by rational or irrational actors, and knowing that the total utility of torturing that baby would not be enough to make up for the amount of backlash faced for the torture, I would not torture the baby to save a dozen people, because it does not maximize utility and isn't worth the trauma and psychological suffering caused to the group.
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chad move tbqdesu
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How? Aren't both groups about good quality posts that make you think?
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I think effortposters is a strict superset of mottezans
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so what is the specialization of Mottezans?
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Cultural difference. They're descended from rationalists, so if it's drama or discussion from that place/ lesswrong/ on of the blogs in the periphery, it's relevant. It's not like anybody enforces or agrees on any of this though, so not really important
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so if I make a long well thought post on anything that is effortposters, but if it is a long post about a political-cultural topic then it is mottezans?
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I think effort-posts about the culture war are marginal. Referencing the big names would definitely count. You could cheat by just making one subargument via reference to a scott article lol
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pretty sure scott articles were not the bread and butter of the motte. They were far more culture war oriented if memory serves right.
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Jesse what the frick are you talking about??
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And it's better to let the world go on thinking a living god who has slaughtered millions of them for the lulz is just hanging around ready to come back whenever? If anything Rorsharch telling the truth would stop millions of people from wasting their lives in fear of the wrong man.
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As per Ozymandias the choice wasn't people living in fear or people not living in fear. The choice was between people destroying the planet or people not destroying the planet.
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You mean the crazy guy who killed his friends, then millions of innocent people and them blamed another friend for the millions dead? Might not be the best judge here
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His friend the "not God" but exists across time and space and sees all looked at his research and confirmed that Ozymandias was right. So yeah after that I do assume that within the rules of the universe and how things were going in the setting, Ozymandias was indeed correct.
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But isnt that cause hes a nihilist cute twink thay believes nothing ever happens?
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No. Yellow Gussy had convinced him something sometimes happens as one of the turning points in the film.
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No.147502779 is right
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screen it silly
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I like Watchmen but I dunno maybe the ending was better written during the Cold War when the story was new.
Because in real life the conflict between the USA and USSR sputtered out on its own.
So Ozymandias the world's smartest man believing mankind was doomed to nuclear war unless he sacrificed a portion of the population to a squid monster (that was actually just a guy he experimented on?) comes across as no better than
academics talking about made up abstract fearmongering like the doomsday clock.
!comicshitters Am I over or under thinking this?
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Thats the point. Ozy is a fricking moron. His own "hero" mentality causes him to get such a savior complex he thinks the only way to save the world is his r-slurred plan he stole from an episode of the outer limits. !comicshitters
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It's set in a fictional world. So maybe in that fictional world there would have been nuclear war. It's not that simple.
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You're right on the money.
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Coinflip:
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They laugh at my boner, will they?! I'll show them! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make!
Snapshots:
https://boards.4chan.org/co/thread/147501777#p147501777:
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archive.ph (click to archive)
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