----- Original Message ----- From: Stephen Date stephend999@yahoo.co.uk
--- littles@lycos.co.uk wrote: >
Those who preach
strict morality are much more likely to butcher someone in real life than those who try to come to terms with their irrational self.
Anyone got the stats on that?
No stats as such - but I'm pretty sure that the Crusades, the Abigensian massacres, the Inquisition, The Thirty Years War, The Jacobin Terror, Stalinism, Maoism and the Khomenist brand of Islam were motivated by a desire to impose a particular view of society and morality on those who resisted it, rather than a desire to write fan-fic where Avon gets hurt and Vila gives him a cuddle.
No stats on it either, myself, but I'm also pretty sure that my uncle, a retired Church of England clergyman who is both as strictly moral and as compassionate and gentle as they come (and who preached strict morality from the pulpit for thirty-odd years), would be more than horrified to learn that he is about to start wielding a butcher knife on the neighbours :).
Secondly, I somehow don't think that the Khomenist etc. regimes would have been improved if they all sat down and wrote h/c fan-fic :). Finally, I'd also like to point out that some of the loudest defences of this sort of fanfic have come from America, which, I'm sorry to say it but it has to be said, has one of the worst records in the world for attempting to impose its worldview, moral standards and values on weaker nations.
(Given the charged nature of discussion on this list, I'm going to add the rider at this point that I'm not accusing anyone on the Lyst of neo-colonialism. I'm just pointing out that to say morally-rigid-bad, touchy-feely-good is to simplify the issue).
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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