On 18 Jan 2006 20:46:05 -0800, "BB" <becnielsen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>think the reviewers are forgetting that the books are set in the
>> (pseudo-) Middle Ages. Those were often pretty nasty times where the
>> rule of law was only intermittently enforced. Setting a series in such
>> a world where some of the characters were nobles, politicians,
>> military leaders and so on and not have a high pro****tion of them
>> acting in ways we might consider reprehensible would be unrealistic
>> and trying to apply too much modern morality to condemn all their
>> actions would be absurd.
>
>This reminds me of University. I had to have a real good think about
>this one for a while. Seriously though when comparing the actions of
>Belgarath, Silk, Talen, Platime and so on to the actions of particular
>Australian Politicans/Businessmen/Crooks whose behaviour should we
>consider to be the most rephrehensible? on one hand we have the
>characters from the novels, petty thieves, murders politicans etc
>acting in the best interests of their particular home world on the
>other hand, we have John Howard playing deputy in Iraq, new (very bad)
>IR reforms, new laws taking away basic human rights, allowing an
>Australian citizen to languish in Guntanomo Bay without a fair trial
>and the list goes on and on and on. Basically what I am trying to say
>is that while we are "called upon to root for a thief, a drunkard, and
>a slew of happy-go-lucky warriors who enjoy killing their enemies" it
>would appear in todays society we are called upon to vote for them
Some people in the series, like Platime, would probably be considered
morally reprehensible in just about any setting, and probably exist in
just about any setting. Some things may change but it seems we always
have some amount of organised crimes.
As to comparing the leaders of the 'Light Brigade' in the series to
modern-day leaders, I suspect Belgarath and co. wouldn't have much
problem with most of the more controversial policies in the 'war on
terror'. Actually, thinking about it, Belgarath's philosophy of not
considering 'good' and 'evil' and boiling the conflict down to 'them'
and 'us' is very similar to Bush's famous quote of 'you're either with
us, or against us', Belgarath just expressed it better. I find the
idea that Bush may be borrowing his policies from the Belgariad to be
vaguely worrying ;)
>instead. it seems that morals wise we haven't moved very far away the
>middle ages, often it seems that we have regressed rather than
>progressed, our society seems to be just as opressive with power still
>firmly skewed towards those in control of money, land and resources
>REVOLUTION COMRADES (sorry I got a bit overexcited)
I'm getting the feeling you feel strongly about certain things ;)
>bec
--
William Marnoch
william@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Film and Book reviews
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