Re: Twilight Universe General Philosophical Musings
Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 3:12 pm
Regarding the horror-level of SM's vampires - remember, these books are designed to be suitable for young readers. While many of us creative types could write stories using SM's vampires that are far more horrifying, I appreciate the fact that my 10 year old son can read the series.
Returning to vampires and evil...
I submit that vampires in their basic, "natural state" are amoral, no more evil or good than a lion or shark that feeds on humans.
As with anything, it's rarely that simple.
There might be other examples like Alice, who were changed with no knowledge or memory of their human life. While her story is not completely fleshed out, I would suspect that much of her morality came from her adoptive family, that she was perhaps Tabula Rasa until that time, though certainly aided by her ability. The Immortal Children are another example, changed too young to have learned and developed a true sense and knowledge of right and wrong and therefore wouldn't be considered evil, despite the horrific impact of their actions.
There are those few who are changed alone, yet retain knowledge of their former life, such as Carlisle. These vampires are undoubtedly heavily influenced by who they were before the change, but then are impacted by their reaction to what they've become and how they feed. Carlisle managed to avoid this, but I would submit that he was an exceptional human, both in morality and willpower and was able to successfully translate that into avoiding taking human life, until he discovered the alternative. What if he hadn't been so lucky? What if he had come across a man who had just been stabbed? Would he have been able to resist? More importantly, how would he have reacted had he fed and killed the man? I suspect that vampires changed in this situation (alone) are impacted by their first killings, their human moral base suffering anguish and guilt from the act, which tends to cause a downward spiral of self-loathing and then numbness, until that new live overwhelms than and effectively swamps all but the last vestiges of human morality. Perhaps some of the "better" ones try to do something like Edward, attempting to only target those determined to be "worthy" of death. Contrastingly, those with bad moral fiber as a human would likely, without other outside influence, become perhaps more evil in those ways they were bad before. While I suspect that racists would quickly lose that specific hatred (unless it had a particularly personal basis), as they no longer have anything in common with whichever group they belonged to before, violent and sadistic tendencies would likely be amplified. In effect, without outside influence, the onset of vampirism would tend to reduce good tendencies and maximize evil ones.
The most common situation, however, would be being turned with a "mentor." While obviously any such newborns would trend toward taking on traits of their "mentor," for my discussion, I'm going to go with a neutral mentor. Important learning here would be in keeping "vampire law", as in, don't get noticed. Targets would be selected with a priority based on ease of access and low profile. The homeless, criminals, perhaps isolated travelers would be the focus; killing a pregnant housewife from suburbia would create the type of massive manhunt and exposure that the vampires don't want. Any good or evil tendencies that the newborn brings into their new life with tend to be minimized, reduced to parameters that fit within the need for stealth and keeping a low profile. While this still allows for a decent amount of variance, any extremes would likely not last. If a group of missing people, even low profile ones, keeps to a certain demographic too much, that would bring extra notice and risk of exposure. The ability to retain strong good traits would be difficult as the newborn will tend to be psychologically vulnerable enough to allow the mentor to heavily influence them, convincing them of the superiority of their new state and such things to reduce the image of humans from being an equal and therefore sacred state to a lesser one, one of "herd animal." This would be similar to the removal of empathy that Knives mentioned except that it would be framed on the species level, not the racial one. Not that this is much comfort to us humans but would fit within the logical path to trend these vampires toward their "amoral" natural states.
Of course, not all mentor vampires are neutral. Any mentor with an especially good or evil morality base is going to try to instill that upon their "creation"; their success will tend to be related to how far from the base morality of their "child" this is, with the evil ones likely having greater success (if for nothing else, the morality of the good ones limits the lengths they will go to to exert influence). Carlisle was able to influence his creations in this manner. Amun had less luck with Benjamin while Joham seems to be doing fine with his hybrid creations. The Volturi, aided no doubt by Chelsea, are also quite successful.
So, given all this, we must evaluate vampires based upon how the remnants of their prior human morality has been applied to their vampirism.
Carlisle - good before, good after and arguably more so. His good traits were amplified by his new life.
Edward - good before, good after despite a time of vigilantism, an event caused by a compromise of his good tendencies and his thirst. The combination of his good tendencies and guilt caused him to cease this activity.
Esme/Emmett/Rose - generally good before, with their good tendencies reinforced by Carlisle. I suspect that had any of them been turned by a neutral vampire, they would have settled into the new life, with perhaps Esme alone having any real challenges of conscious.
Jasper - perhaps illustrates what Esme might have become (albeit less militaristic), including the eventual build up of guilt until other approaches are searched for. It seems callous, but I doubt if either Emmett or Rose would have struggled in the same way.
Denalis - little history is known and what little there is is from one scene in MS. We know they went from seducing and killing men to just seducing them. While their motivations before they realized it would be better to keep the men alive is unknown, as they came to their "change of heart" naturally, I can only assume that they weren't motivated by sadism. Given that assumption, the "hunting shift" from "just killing" to "seduce, love, and drain" was motivated by, at worst, because they wanted sex, and at best, because they wanted the men (who they were going to kill anyway) to die happy. Without the sadistic component, I just can't see any evil in the act (given the basic assumption that natural vampire that hunts to live is amoral).
James - we don't know much about him. I doubt if he was a nice man before. He was deliberately sadistic to Bella, not that he cared about causing the pain to Bella, but he wanted to cause pain to Edward. While I don't consider James particularly evil, per se, he's capable of it when it suits his needs. Very Machiavellian.
The Volturi - I consider them the most evil for, my perception is that they revel in the fear and suffering of their human prey and, additionally, try to use it to "cleanse" the morality from their followers.
Returning to vampires and evil...
I submit that vampires in their basic, "natural state" are amoral, no more evil or good than a lion or shark that feeds on humans.
As with anything, it's rarely that simple.
There might be other examples like Alice, who were changed with no knowledge or memory of their human life. While her story is not completely fleshed out, I would suspect that much of her morality came from her adoptive family, that she was perhaps Tabula Rasa until that time, though certainly aided by her ability. The Immortal Children are another example, changed too young to have learned and developed a true sense and knowledge of right and wrong and therefore wouldn't be considered evil, despite the horrific impact of their actions.
There are those few who are changed alone, yet retain knowledge of their former life, such as Carlisle. These vampires are undoubtedly heavily influenced by who they were before the change, but then are impacted by their reaction to what they've become and how they feed. Carlisle managed to avoid this, but I would submit that he was an exceptional human, both in morality and willpower and was able to successfully translate that into avoiding taking human life, until he discovered the alternative. What if he hadn't been so lucky? What if he had come across a man who had just been stabbed? Would he have been able to resist? More importantly, how would he have reacted had he fed and killed the man? I suspect that vampires changed in this situation (alone) are impacted by their first killings, their human moral base suffering anguish and guilt from the act, which tends to cause a downward spiral of self-loathing and then numbness, until that new live overwhelms than and effectively swamps all but the last vestiges of human morality. Perhaps some of the "better" ones try to do something like Edward, attempting to only target those determined to be "worthy" of death. Contrastingly, those with bad moral fiber as a human would likely, without other outside influence, become perhaps more evil in those ways they were bad before. While I suspect that racists would quickly lose that specific hatred (unless it had a particularly personal basis), as they no longer have anything in common with whichever group they belonged to before, violent and sadistic tendencies would likely be amplified. In effect, without outside influence, the onset of vampirism would tend to reduce good tendencies and maximize evil ones.
The most common situation, however, would be being turned with a "mentor." While obviously any such newborns would trend toward taking on traits of their "mentor," for my discussion, I'm going to go with a neutral mentor. Important learning here would be in keeping "vampire law", as in, don't get noticed. Targets would be selected with a priority based on ease of access and low profile. The homeless, criminals, perhaps isolated travelers would be the focus; killing a pregnant housewife from suburbia would create the type of massive manhunt and exposure that the vampires don't want. Any good or evil tendencies that the newborn brings into their new life with tend to be minimized, reduced to parameters that fit within the need for stealth and keeping a low profile. While this still allows for a decent amount of variance, any extremes would likely not last. If a group of missing people, even low profile ones, keeps to a certain demographic too much, that would bring extra notice and risk of exposure. The ability to retain strong good traits would be difficult as the newborn will tend to be psychologically vulnerable enough to allow the mentor to heavily influence them, convincing them of the superiority of their new state and such things to reduce the image of humans from being an equal and therefore sacred state to a lesser one, one of "herd animal." This would be similar to the removal of empathy that Knives mentioned except that it would be framed on the species level, not the racial one. Not that this is much comfort to us humans but would fit within the logical path to trend these vampires toward their "amoral" natural states.
Of course, not all mentor vampires are neutral. Any mentor with an especially good or evil morality base is going to try to instill that upon their "creation"; their success will tend to be related to how far from the base morality of their "child" this is, with the evil ones likely having greater success (if for nothing else, the morality of the good ones limits the lengths they will go to to exert influence). Carlisle was able to influence his creations in this manner. Amun had less luck with Benjamin while Joham seems to be doing fine with his hybrid creations. The Volturi, aided no doubt by Chelsea, are also quite successful.
So, given all this, we must evaluate vampires based upon how the remnants of their prior human morality has been applied to their vampirism.
Carlisle - good before, good after and arguably more so. His good traits were amplified by his new life.
Edward - good before, good after despite a time of vigilantism, an event caused by a compromise of his good tendencies and his thirst. The combination of his good tendencies and guilt caused him to cease this activity.
Esme/Emmett/Rose - generally good before, with their good tendencies reinforced by Carlisle. I suspect that had any of them been turned by a neutral vampire, they would have settled into the new life, with perhaps Esme alone having any real challenges of conscious.
Jasper - perhaps illustrates what Esme might have become (albeit less militaristic), including the eventual build up of guilt until other approaches are searched for. It seems callous, but I doubt if either Emmett or Rose would have struggled in the same way.
Denalis - little history is known and what little there is is from one scene in MS. We know they went from seducing and killing men to just seducing them. While their motivations before they realized it would be better to keep the men alive is unknown, as they came to their "change of heart" naturally, I can only assume that they weren't motivated by sadism. Given that assumption, the "hunting shift" from "just killing" to "seduce, love, and drain" was motivated by, at worst, because they wanted sex, and at best, because they wanted the men (who they were going to kill anyway) to die happy. Without the sadistic component, I just can't see any evil in the act (given the basic assumption that natural vampire that hunts to live is amoral).
James - we don't know much about him. I doubt if he was a nice man before. He was deliberately sadistic to Bella, not that he cared about causing the pain to Bella, but he wanted to cause pain to Edward. While I don't consider James particularly evil, per se, he's capable of it when it suits his needs. Very Machiavellian.
The Volturi - I consider them the most evil for, my perception is that they revel in the fear and suffering of their human prey and, additionally, try to use it to "cleanse" the morality from their followers.