My Tolwyn Essay
- Thread starter Bob McDob
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Thymerlord
Rear Admiral
R Lee Ermey now that is a great actor!
Bob McDob
Better Health Through Less Flavor
Re: Re: My Tolwyn Essay
But the Amadeus incident is one of the few where we know the details, and I thought it provided a good example of the attacks during the war. I would have listed the others, but I wrote this on a webboard without my refrences.
He could abide anything, except knowing he had killed his race. He deserved the same punishment his miscalculation would visit on them. He stepped off the edge of the chair. The knotted and braided bed sheet closed about his throat, snapping his neck. As death released his grip, the Senatorial Medal of Honor which he had won for the defense of Earth, and the pips he had once worn as a newly commissioned ensign, fell from his hand.
- The Price of Freedom
But the Amadeus incident is one of the few where we know the details, and I thought it provided a good example of the attacks during the war. I would have listed the others, but I wrote this on a webboard without my refrences.
He could abide anything, except knowing he had killed his race. He deserved the same punishment his miscalculation would visit on them. He stepped off the edge of the chair. The knotted and braided bed sheet closed about his throat, snapping his neck. As death released his grip, the Senatorial Medal of Honor which he had won for the defense of Earth, and the pips he had once worn as a newly commissioned ensign, fell from his hand.
- The Price of Freedom
Originally posted by Raptor
Well, as I've been arguing in the "Seether" thread, what Tolwyn proposed was nothing like Darwinism or natural selection. For one thing, natural selection looks at an induvidual's *overall* fitness to survive, not weeding out people who had particular induvidual genes like the Gen-Select does. Not only that, natural selection doesn't doesn't work on a predetermined ideal of the Master Race, but rather changes its selective pressures based on the challenges the population is facing at any one time and in any one place. And thirdly, natural selection rewards genetic diversity rather than encouraging genetic stagnation by locking us into someone's pre-determined ideals. I won't go into what we covered in that thread again, but there are quite a few instances where genes that where thought to be "bad" actually turned out to be a survival advantage in some situations.
Yes, well, that was his general intention, right? Kinda like the Shadows and gene selec...ooh yeah, no B5 refrences.
Just spent a lot of time on these boards.
Re: Re: Re: My Tolwyn Essay
It seems to me that the only thing he was repenting in that passage was the fact that he had failed to see his plan through. He was still believing that only he, in all his infinite wisdom and insight, had the ability to save humanity, and by rejecting him, humanity had doomed itself. (Note the future tense "would visit on them". He was repenting not what he had done, but what he expected to happen.) He apparently couldn't comprehend the fact that the human race could get by just fine without him.
Best, Raptor
It seems to me that the only thing he was repenting in that passage was the fact that he had failed to see his plan through. He was still believing that only he, in all his infinite wisdom and insight, had the ability to save humanity, and by rejecting him, humanity had doomed itself. (Note the future tense "would visit on them". He was repenting not what he had done, but what he expected to happen.) He apparently couldn't comprehend the fact that the human race could get by just fine without him.
Best, Raptor
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Do not confuse blind Tolwyn hatred with actual facts -- the passage seems fairly clear that he realizes he was going about his plan *wrong*.
(And, to wit, *could* the human race have survived without Tolwyn? The old philosophical argument about whether you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby takes on much deeper meaning here, as "Hitler" also saved mankind numerous times earlier in life <G>).
(And, to wit, *could* the human race have survived without Tolwyn? The old philosophical argument about whether you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby takes on much deeper meaning here, as "Hitler" also saved mankind numerous times earlier in life <G>).
Saturnyne
Vice Admiral
heh heh... it depends on what Tolwyn did in his career... but I tend to think not, as his role in the universe was obviously determined.
I guess it's one of those questions that doesn't have an answer. Every answer that says the human race could have would be met with an equal argument as to why the human race wouldn't have.
However, the people of Telamon would have certainly survived if Tolwyn was not around.
I guess it's one of those questions that doesn't have an answer. Every answer that says the human race could have would be met with an equal argument as to why the human race wouldn't have.
However, the people of Telamon would have certainly survived if Tolwyn was not around.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Originally posted by Saturnyne
However, the people of Telamon would have certainly survived if Tolwyn was not around.
Ah, but would they? Tolwyn held back the Kilrathi -- who would have slaughtered those colonists anyway.
So you're saying that in the end, even Tolwyn himself realised what a crock-of-shit the idea of murdering most of humanity to create his "superior" race was? I guess I can live with that.
In that passage though, he still refers to the rest of humanity as "the dregs", which seems more than a little odd for a man who is repenting for his crimes. He realises he was wrong in his *methord* (which lead to it's failure) but not in the plan itself.Could humanity have survived without a lot of other people? The Joint Chiefs who ordered the undercover mission to find out the secrets of the Hari project, Paladin, Hunter and Bear who carried, Grecko who ordered the landing action that took out the Hakagas, Krueger and his forces who stopped Earth from being nuked, and so on? There were a whole lot of people who could justifiable have claimed to saved humanity in the battle of Terra, and at other times. Do all of them then have the right to plot to wipe out the bulk of humanity? Does a doctor, who saves lives during his career, then have more right to pick up a gun and kill someone? And if you save multiple lives, or save one person over and over and over again, does it make it less of a crime to walk up to him one day and blow his brains out? If you're a millionaire philantropist who saves dozens of starving children, does that make a rape or murder or child abuse you commit less of a crime? The problem I have with that view is that we're saying there are some who have more right than others to murder. Both legally (in any society that obeys the Common Law) and morally, that's a very slippery slope. Past good deeds don't somehow cancel out a crime. If we believe that, then we license any number of people to go out and kill or rape or maim as they please.
Best, Raptor
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
How many people are you willing to sacrafice? One? Two? A dozen? Lives will be lost, Raptor, and if you can't take that, then I think you should tell us now and be done with it.
(I'd also like to point out that if it wasn't for Tolwyn, we wouldn't be around to fight the Nephilim, now would we? Plus we don't know what happened to the rest of the GE soldiers from his skunk projects. I imagine they were used in a more covert fashion during SO.)
(I'd also like to point out that if it wasn't for Tolwyn, we wouldn't be around to fight the Nephilim, now would we? Plus we don't know what happened to the rest of the GE soldiers from his skunk projects. I imagine they were used in a more covert fashion during SO.)
Thymerlord
Rear Admiral
Laws and morals are neccesary but sometimes you just have beat the crap out of the other guy any way you can to save lives,in the long run,and sometimes you get a bloody nose.After all fragging two major cities is'nt really an honorable way to fight a war but considering the number of lives that would have been lost subdueing Japan it was a worthy tradeoff.Likewise sometimes to save many lives you have to hit below the belt or play dirty it is neccesary in reality, the bad guys are going to do their best to wipe you out and you have to stop them by any means.
%)^(^)$$_$_)#)@_($#_*$)#$(*%)$ ! cursing aside That's a pretty simplistic look at world war II. Not everything can be blantently catagorized as, these are the good guys and those are the bad guys. If we were to use such a simplictic model, I can't help but feel bad guy vs bad guy would be a better way to look at it. The U.S Fragging two major cities as you put it is not the act of a "good guy" . History is told differently depending on were you are, the "good guy" is damn near always just which ever side your desended from. calling an act of utter F*%7ing mass murder "playing dirty" is somewhat understating it 
!
!Battler Hawke
Spaceman
I agree
P.S. if any of you think you can do better than
bob please try
I think the US use of atmoic weapons is a topic for another board. That kind of topic only leads to someone getting people yelling, getting banned, etc.
Maybe without Tolwyn, Blair would have had better luck proving his case after the Tiger's Claw incident. Maybe Blair not in "exile" would have helped Confed. As Raptor pointed out, you could add or remove a number of people and events may have turned out differently. To answer an earlier question, I dod not beileve Tolwyn had any grandchildren. He did have his nephew Kevin, who I am assuming is the Kevin Paladin mention to Blair in his e-mail in the WCP manual. Wonder how hard folks are on Kevin? He was very close, in the later books, to his uncle. One can't help but wonder what he knew.
Maybe without Tolwyn, Blair would have had better luck proving his case after the Tiger's Claw incident. Maybe Blair not in "exile" would have helped Confed. As Raptor pointed out, you could add or remove a number of people and events may have turned out differently. To answer an earlier question, I dod not beileve Tolwyn had any grandchildren. He did have his nephew Kevin, who I am assuming is the Kevin Paladin mention to Blair in his e-mail in the WCP manual. Wonder how hard folks are on Kevin? He was very close, in the later books, to his uncle. One can't help but wonder what he knew.
Saturnyne
Vice Admiral
D'oh! Stupid good points! Oh well. I've not heard much about the exploits of Telamon during the Kilrathi war.
But Wilford says it's such a frontier system that the planets have retained their original discovery numbers... at what point in the Kilrathi war were they discovered, and at what point where they colonized?
And don't anyone say that Telamon was colonized after the war. That would blatantly contradict LOAF's quote up there.
Thymerlord
Rear Admiral
Shane,Dekkar I will admit perhaps it was a bad example ,and a bad choice on my part but the smegging point is the important part not the stupid frigging example so don't be so damn sensitive,try being half Apache,a quarter Irish,a quarter Scottish,and a quarter English and having to sit through lectures about the glorious civilizing influence of the English/American culture on the uncivilized savages!So don't start in on me about good guy, bad guy when until recently the winner wrote the history(ex American civil war, not a lot of Confederate books) now all of that stuff aside, and I do apologize for the profanity.As for the original point, Bob took the time to write an essay on his beliefs of Tolwyn,whether we agree with him or not is unimportant, what is important is the effort.As for Telamon nothing excuses the use of an entire planet as a test for a bioweapon,it's like the U.S army bomb tests in Nevada on Infantrymen to see how the handled it, it's irresponsible and inexcusable whatever Tolwyn's shortcomings or achievements they will always be overshadowed by the events of WC4.(sorry about the length it won't happen again)