Tolwyn: fallen hero or villian?

He's not a villain, imho. What led him to all the wrong he did were his good intentions.
So basically I consider him a hero who went too far to do what was right, and ended up acting as a villain in his final days.

--Eder
 
Fair enough. Im kinda new to the CZ so i dont know what topics have been discussed before. It was just my opinion anyway , which is what the CZ is for.
 
It all depends on how you look at Tolywn whether he's a hero or not. He was going to slaughter millions of innocent Pilgrims to protect the Confederation. Had he done it, he would have been considered a hero to Confed and evil to Pilgrims. Tolywn was going to slaughter billions of Kilrathi with the Behemoth. Had he done that, he would be a hero to Confed and evil to the Kilrathi. He DID slaughter innocent terrans. Had his project finished, in time he would be regarded as a hero. But it didn't finish, so he's evil.

There's no real way to say if he was simply a fallen hero, or a dastardly villian. It's all relative to where your coming from.
 
Sorry to go back to this hitler thing.
But did ther german people of that time feel hitler to be mad, evil or insane? I think not.
Hitlers actions were bad i agree but it depends on who you are to how bad his actions are.
This is the same as the Tolwyn if you were a part of the tainted sector within confed then his actions were due, if not they were evil deeds.
Just think about it.
 
Tolwyn's a hero. Granted, he went into method's that I don't agree with towards the end. But considering the beheamoth (No pun inteded ;) ) good he did for the human race. Sure, he screwed up, but even though he did, I still support him like I support MacArthur.
 
The thing I have trouble is with the idea that wrong actions, such as murdering innocent people because they don't fit some arbitary "perfect" gentoype, become more acceptable just because your intentions were good. Very few of the people who commit atrocities believe that what they're doing is wrong. On the contrary, most justify it to themselves by believing they are serving a higher cause, be it religon or nationality or the survival of humanity. Like the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Best, Raptor
 
Tolwyn's the classic tragic hero. He begins as a generally good man, with some character faults... he tends to be a perfectionist can't admit when he's wrong. This search for perfection and his need to protect humainty leads to his fall from glory, and turns him into a monster. It's the same formula as happens in almost all classic tragic heros. Either the 'hero' dies, or a character flaw turns him into what he wished to fight, or something he hates. This is quite obviously the case with Tolwyn.

TC
 
Originally posted by Napoleon
NO. the difference between tolwyn and hitler is huge. Hitler was an idiot who had no real military ability. While Tolwyn was probably the greatest military leader of all time (imho). Hitler killed the people base don his non-scientifically based opinions of germans being the master race, while Tolwyn used science to remove the people who were actually genetically inferior.

No, Tolwyn removed the people that he *believed* were genetically inferior. There are two reasons that why that idea is scientifically unsound.

First, one of the most important things that determines the evolutionary success of any species is the amount of variety in its gene pool, because genes that are an disadvantage in one situation are an advantage in another. The classic example of that is the sickle cell anaemia trait, which actually makes a person far more likely to survive in a malaria prone area, and is actively selected for in those countries. Variety in the gene pool makes a species much more likely to survive because there will always be *some* in a population who can adapt to any change in our situation. On the other hand, if we're all of one preselected genotype, we're betting that all the conditions we'll *ever* encounter in the future will be suitable for people of that type. We'll be both second guessing the thousands of years of evolution that we've had in the past (by removing genes that natural selection has allowed to remain in our gene pool) and trying to predict what'll happen in the thousands of years to come. That to me sounds like hubris of the highest order.

Second, Tolwyn's methord is flawed in that it kills off people if they even have one "bad" gene. Someone who might be a brilliant fighter pilot or marine or a great weapons scientist would be killed even if the trait they had didn't in any way impair the work they did. That's totally differant to the way natural selection works, which selects for the organism's *overall* fitness to survive, the *sum* of all their genes. That means you're going to lose massive amounts of talent in every sector of human activity, and hoping that that this talent is still going to be replicated the much smaller population you have left. That's a hugely wastefull way of going about improving the population.

Best, Raptor


[Edited by Raptor on 07-15-2001 at 00:44]
 
Originally posted by Nebula
Why he was a hero?
Many true heroes died under the orders of Tolwyn...
That makes him a hero?

My guess would be, because he saved the Confederation on numerous ocasions...
 
yeah he did. He may of done some bad things just like all important high ranckers but I still suport and admire the man
 
Originally posted by Razer92
yeah he did. He may of done some bad things just like all important high ranckers but I still suport and admire the man

Personally, I feel some pity and sympathy for Tolwyn, but I don't either support or admire him. While no-one doubts that he did good things in the past, that doesn't excuse the atrocity he was responsible for on Telamon. He had no more right than anyone else did to murder innocent people, just like a doctor doesn't have any more right to murder someone else just because the doctor had saved people's lives in the past.

Best, Raptor
 
I admire tolwyn greatly just not after FC.

Also Raptor, you are essentially wrong and correct. Your number 2 statement is right on. your number 1 statment is flawed because evolution is towards traits that are benificial so to remove the generally negative traits like genes for cancer, stupidity (ie low iq), and other generaly "bad" characteristics would have no negative effect on evolution. Everybody would not be the same, would you say decker and blair are the same? no yet they both survived the bugs (not nephilim, the disease). Also another "good" thing about removing a large portion of the population is the fact that while close inbreeding does create large ammounts of defectives or culls it also leads to more rapid aquision of traits and faster evolution. So to remove a large portion of the population would generally allow this to take place more so than with a larger population. This is why I hold that human evolution has been effectivly stopped, we all outbreed so much that characteristics do not have the chance to be aquired. Finally, tolwyn was just doing what nature would have done if not for human interferance. We through technology, (killing snakes and other deadly animals, creating shelter, not having to hunt, medicine, ect ad nauseum) have stopped the survival of the fittest struggle to reproduce. Any human without a serious defect can reproduce and often. I am nearsighted, and while I don't see this as a cardinal trait I know that if I didn't have modern inovations I would have died when I was 12 from not being able to see any potentiall threats. So if you look at it that way tolwyn was just doing what MUST be done for human evolution as well as what WOULD have been done already. Though i must admit it would have been much more acceptable and moral to render those inferior people infertile to provent them from breeding rather than kill em
 
While no-one doubts that he did good things in the past, that doesn't excuse the atrocity he was responsible for on Telamon. He had no more right than anyone else did to murder innocent people, just like a doctor doesn't have any more right to murder someone else just because the doctor had saved people's lives in the past.

Best, Raptor [/B]



Exactly right. You said it perfectly .
 
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