The excessively technical kind of reflections I had for the previous two demands for me to tackle a different scope just to rest that bit of my brain. So, we’re here to consider some of the questions (equally difficult to answer) about just general morality and grappling with our belief systems. There are two interesting ideas that stood out to me: perhaps because of just how difficult it is to find an answer to it, or perhaps because I feel like they are things that personally affect or resonate with me.
The age old: good vs evil
Yang Wenli is like an intellectual in every sense of the word and hence his world view really sparked a lot of my personal reflection. He said something to the effect that there is no absolute right and no absolute evil, but the difference is that the latter is much harder to accept and hence people cling on to belief of their own righteousness. The anime did a good job in presenting both the Alliance and the Empire in a nuanced way that refuses to be simply categorised as the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. To me, what was aggravating was to witness the Alliance people completely ignoring these nuances and resorting to the “democracy good, authoritarian bad” rhetoric because the way they cling onto their own ideas of what is right just seems so foolish. I think that at this age we have all come to realise that the world is never neatly compartmentalised into binary white and black terms. The difference is in the shades of greys in between. And anyone who simplifies the world without acknowledging this just comes off as a fool.
On a personal level though, this idea of no absolute evil or absolute good is pretty true for most people: there are hardly any 大善or大恶in the world, and if you do meet them that’s truly your luck. More often, we’re dealing with people who are of varying shades of grey in between, we’re struggling to work with each other in our capacity as a morally ambiguous individual. I am an easily complacent person, and this philosophy is a reminder to myself to acknowledge that I too have flaws and that I need to have the self-awareness to identify these flaws instead of clinging on to my own righteous belief.
It is also something that I should keep in mind when I am communicating with others – I think I have a rather weak set of communication skills simply because there wasn’t a model in my family for me to learn from. When working with others, I impose my high expectations on others and hence tend to be disappointed a lot and complain about other’s inadequacies. I am well aware of the fact that the people who I am complaining about are not absolutely evil and what annoys me are the small faults that everyone has, but that awareness has not translated to a corresponding set of actions yet. People disagree with me not because they want to be antagonistic, but because they believe that they are right, just as how I hold my ground because I believe that I am right. And I should not fault people for choosing the easier option of clinging on to our sense of righteousness instead of acknowledging our problems because I am guilty of it too. Humans are weak and imperfect creatures and I need to reconcile the idea that I am human too and the way I view others could also very well be the way others view me. I need to put that awareness into practice and really work on my communication with that in view.
I really respect Yang Wenli, and his equivalent of non-fictional people in this world, for their ability to come to terms with the fact that people much rather believe in their goodness. It requires a level of maturity that I have yet to grasp, seeing as how I still get angry at the fictional politicians for their single-minded refusal to acknowledge their own flaws. They have a really big heart, and still can forgive human pettiness despite being so privy to the ugly aspects of human nature. Oscar Wilde once said that “it takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.” Or something to that effect. I aspire to be like that.
Past mistakes
Something that I have come to realise more and more frequently these days is that a lot of the values we hold toward personal interactions are not really transferable to that of the international or political stage. One of these manifestations is how we choose to forgive people for their past mistakes. On a personal level, we believe in the idea of “forgive and forget”, and I personally want to hold on to that because there are just those times where honest mistakes were made. But LOTGH takes that onto the political front: Should a leader’s past faults be forgiven? A leader is still human and will make mistakes, but at the same time a leader cannot just be held to the standard of the common man, otherwise how would we entrust them with responsibilities?
A very telling plot point is the fiasco with Westerland Massacre. The background: Reinhard is on his way to overthrow the old dynasty within the Empire and the aristocracy from the old dynasty refuse to relinquish their power and hence formed a rebellion that controlled a small portion of the galaxy under the Empire’s rule. For some trivial reason (because these mouldy senile men are stupid like that) they decided to send nuclear warheads onto the planet called Westerland as a show of their power. Reinhard was pre-warned of this tragedy and of course he demanded that they intervene to save the innocent. However, his chief advisor Oberstein advised him to simply sit back and broadcast the atrocity so that the old dynasty would utterly lose their support and bring the civil war to a close sooner. It was a politically effective and almost necessary decisions, yet it was so brutal and morally abhorrent in Reinhard’s capacity as a human. Later on, when his conquest of the universe was successful and he pledged to use reforms to do good for the people, there was an assassination attempt by his own soldier whose family was on Westerland. He was dragged off screaming about how Reinhard’s dynasty was founded on blood and he was no different from the tyrant before him.
I was in a mood almost as depressive as Reinhard’s following this incident. This was such a disquieting question. For one, how does one make that decision as a political leader when it comes in conflict with your role as a moral being? It is the most viable and effective method to end the civil war, but do the millions of lives lost in that instant account for nothing? After Reinhard’s success, this dirt would only be swept under the carpet and are rationalised into a necessary stepping stone in the path of history. How can the good of the majority be a justification for compromising on the minority? Are the minority not even people? And to begin with, minority is only relative, what happens when this group runs into the millions? Does the quantity affect how right the decision is? On another hand, how do you deal with the fact that it was not even your own decision, but something that you have endorsed? The people closest to Reinhard kept convincing him that it was not his fault but he still feels responsible for it.
I think of perhaps some real-life examples of how this dilemma panned out: Justin Trudeau with his blackface, or Kurt Waldheim with his Nazi-sympathising tendencies. On a smaller scale, politicians try to dig up dirt on each other and use blemishes in the past as a way to undermine each other. How do we decide what is considered forgivable and what not? What if it was a mistake made in the hot-blooded times of youth? I think that sucks because if I were placed in their shoes I would like to be forgiven. Why destroy a man over his past and didn’t really mean to? Moral ambiguity is something I would have to deal with as I grow up, but as of now I would like to hold on to the idea that as much as possible I should apply my personal ideals onto all aspects of my life.
Updates 
Leave a comment