A Link and a quote
http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/weikart.html
One cannot comprehend Hitler's immense popularity in Germany without understanding the ethical dimension to his worldview and his political policies...Hitler embraced an evolutionary ethic that made Darwinian fitness and health...and the Darwinian struggle for existence...the only criteria for moral standards.
Darwinists insisted that morality was not fixed, but historically changing, and though many emphasized the relativism of morality, one factor remained constant: the evolutionary process itself. Thus many writers on evolutionary ethics exalted evolutionary progress—and everything that contributed to it—to the status of highest moral good. Health and sickness became criteria for making moral judgments, since they influence evolutionary progress.
I hope my fellow CZrs find those quite illustrative about the 'evolutionary ethics' present on the Black Lance. Compare Tolwyn's speech with this interview, the similarities are not subtle at all. The Nazi angle on WCIV was an effective reference to explain how this is all very bad. This text was chosen because the game made this reference, but it could be done without it.
This is the motivation that makes Tolwyn not perceive Telamon as a moral wrong. Eliminating the weak is moral goal, what of course is completely against the traditional ethics of helping the weak. Blair represents this ethic, even if he’s not entirely aware of what he’s up against until the end. Protecting weak people, in Tolwyn’s view, is a moral wrong like treason.
Objectively speaking, this kind of bad philosophy was never successful. Unfortunate it’s common to find this kind of thing misguidedly associated with evolution. And while I’ll agree that it doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t prevent people from embracing it.
LOAF: Not trying to revive and old debate, just giving an example. Also, this really doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try a gradual approach instead of immediate use of bio-weapons all over. The specifics about Tolwyn’s plan don’t change the ideas behind it.
EDIT: Since this is a controversial issue, it should be important to note this comments are made in the context of the game. So an ‘evolutionary ethic’ in which that helping the weak is makes the species stronger might be conceptually valid, but was not used. Furthermore, of course there were other factors involved, like the Kilrathi war, and real or perceived problems like economic stagnation, social degradation, and alien threats. While ideology was not the only factor, it takes a predominant role in the later parts.
