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WWYD, Part 1WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
One day you're out browsing the astral, wandering around talking to entities and entertaining yourself. All of a sudden a smaller entity chased by a much larger one comes straight for you. The smaller entity seems to be calling for help, while the larger one is yelling 'Thief!'. What would you do? -Adam
Point and laugh?
"Everything I need is not really what I want.
I really really want to see you die." Rot by Dry Kill Logic
I'd rip their guts out and eat them. Then I would laugh and piss on their remains.
The forges of manifestation are never quiescent. They are simply so far away from normal reality that you can't hear them.
Whack them both, take all their tech, and hide the bodies.
![]() Actually not, I would ignore them, not getting my ass invloved into something I don't have anything to do with.
That depends entirely on how difficult they made it to ignore them. Avoiding the situation would be my call, since I don't know either of them and am a bit suspicious of strangers approaching me. If it was difficult to ignore, I'd try to stop one or both of them and give them a mediated environment to work things out in, but it would take a LOT of hassling to get me to the point where I'd interfere.
I thinks, if I were directly approached, I would hear them both out, then decide from their. Depending on their stories, I would either ignore the situation from then, or help out as best I could.
I've had similar happen to me, and chose to mediate the situation, based on...I suppose empathy coming from both individuals. I got the impression it was a misunderstanding and poor communication, rather than anything serious; and sure enough, that's what it turned out to be.
These days...I think it would depend on the situation itself, and other mitigating factors (assuming I don't know either entity). My default answer though would be to not interfere, unless some reason presented itself to cause me to think it would be safe or best to do so. Or unless they made it increasingly difficult to ignore them, as Rene said. For all I know, it could be a 'staged' fight, to get me dragged into something (yes, I'm a tad cautious...how did you guess) ![]() The issue that springs to mind with hearing them both out, Obsidian, is how do you know whether one is lying, and what he/they are lying about? Also, doesn't it seem...weird, to have one entity chase another up to you, trying to catch them; you sit them down and hear both sides; then decide it's not safe to intervene and say "ok, i'm done listening, you boys toddle along now"? I don't know, I just can't see them leaving too easily once they've got your ear/attention, especially if one of them is in danger and thinks you're in a position to help.
Ya know...when you put it like that, it would indeed be weird.
And you're right, it would be hard to tell if they were lying, if it were staged, etc. Maybe look into it, before helping? And...I think you could still walk away, after hearing them both out. Like...Use the old "I left my oven on, cya" line, or just say "Well...There's nothing I can do to help you" thing...That would work, wouldn't it? Dunno...Maybe it'd be best to leave them alone, unless you see a real good reason to not leave them be... Like, if you know one of them...Then it'd be different...I'm gonna go now ![]()
Definitely. But we're all limited by the ways in which we can look into things, and the resources we have at our disposal. Okay, I'm playing devil's advocate here, ignore me, I'll hush now ![]()
Well, let's play immersion scenario here. You're you, and I'm a smaller entity on the run from the bad guy, who chases me up to you. I hide behind you and rant he's trying to catch me for something. So you manage to get him to stop trying to kill me or shoving you out of the way telling you it's none of your business, and me to stop running, long enough to sit us down and hear us both out. Then you decide you're not in a favorable position to help, or you don't feel it's a good idea. Well that's all fine and dandy, but where the hell does it leave me? I'm three feet or so away from a large entity that possibly wants my head on a spike. Think I'm going to run away from the one possible source of help, I've been able to find? To me, I'd say, "well the person was nice enough (or gullible enough), to at least hear me out and be concerned, so I'm going to up the anty and plead/beg/grovel/cry/whinge/whatever it'll take to get him to help me. Even offer him something if necessary." No way in hell I'm running away from someone who was concerned enough to get involved in the first place, without at least exhausting possibilities to get them on my side; that person might well be my last hope. And notice I haven't said whether I'm guilty or innocent of whatever I'm being chased for (because in reality for me, it wouldn't matter...I was seeking out help, and any help would do at that point). Now I doubt if every entity you're liable to meet, would be that stubborn and persistent like me ![]() And I'm not saying you couldn't do that...just that it might not be enough to budge a determined, scared-out-of-his-wits entity from leaving possible help. Not without perhaps, "showing him the door", so to speak ![]()
lol, yes...if you knew one, it'd probably be different. Just depends on how you handle that sort of thing I guess. Wouldn't be the first entity I've ran to for help whom I consider(ed) a friend, in genuine need of said help, only to be told to am-scray, because their hands are tied; or they don't want to get involved; or it's not their policy to get involved in things which don't concern them; or they can't help...or whatever.
I hope you or someone else revises this again - some more parts to this would be nice, I think. This one I'm pretty hesitant about answering. I suspect this will be one of those posts that either significantly drops or raises my chances of being accepted into Omni. Anyway, I'm the second vote as of writing this for "Subdue them both, and figure out what happened." (unless that's what I meant to vote for but the poll expired by then.) First, I want to point out - subdue implies use of force, of the 'whack them over the head' kind. At least the way I typically think of the word. If it was within my abilities, I would much rather just drop shields over each of them, strong enough to keep them from harming each other - I wouldn't want to actually offensively use force unless the end result was most likely going to be worse if I didn't. I'd much rather just protect them both from each other, then telepathically talk to them. Frankly, the same applies to physical life. If the same was going on physically, my ideal response would be to stop them both, and actually hear them out. Of course, ideals are rarely attainable, and even with my martial arts training I know for a fact that there's only so much I can do to stop determined attempts at violence - and pretty much all of it involves at least hurting, if not harming, those involved. Same goes for magic - but that kinda comes back to why I seek power magically - to be able to stand by my ethical principles. Which involves, when possible, not needlessly harming entities. Furthermore, I realize that there are going to be situations where interference would result in greater suffering for me, people/entities associated with me, etc. As such, there's obviously practical limitations and bounds on the application of this ideal. I would want to help, and I would want to see the issue resolved with as little suffering as possible. But if it's some god or something even bigger (or, hell, most things smaller than gods are still much bigger than me), that's doing the chasing, and it very clearly conveys that it will destroy me for interfering, I'll probably pull out. Depending on the severity of the situation, it might be something I might be okay with dying for, up to and including soul obliteration, but as callous as it might sound, if I can get away from the situation with my abilities intact or in a state I can repair later, without bringing needless suffering on others, I'd rather do that because at least then I can help others in the future. Needless to say though, it would take a lot for me to be willing to not intervene at all. At least, I hope. I don't know how my inner is about such things. Maybe it would just take charge and steer my astral body the fuck away from such danger. Even against something that can make my entire soul an energy mist in an instant, I'd at least try to communicate with it, even if I know I can't help at all if it went to confrontation. At the end of the day, I'm not willing to be content with living my own life while ignoring the suffering of others. Based on what I've learned from this message board about the reality of how things work on the astral, yeah, there's a lot of suffering and injustice I'll just have to ignore, because I won't be powerful enough to deal with it, and even getting powerful enough to deal with one case isn't going to be enough, because when you start intervening with one entity, something bigger, or a large number of smaller things, is just gonna get pissed. Fucking around too much in the water will kill you, if not by bigger fish then by many similarly sized ones. But just because the multiverse isn't fair doesn't mean I shouldn't try to make it so. Will I ever succeed? Probably not. But the least I can do is help an entity here or there, ideally in a way that resolves the issue without blasting other entities, and hope that eventually it'll catch on. And now onto other people's comments:
Caution is one thing, ignoring entities is another. Especially when, without any other information, one's no more likely than the other. I don't agree with it for the same reason I don't agree with the same conclusion in physical life. Any time someone approaches you for help, there's always the chance they are really a manipulative bastard trying to do something or drag you into something or otherwise harm you or someone else. And I encourage people to always consider that possibility, not just with strangers but with people they've known for a while. I also encourage people to prepare themselves so that they are able to damage such people enough so that to stop them should their scheming become apparent, if not to save yourself then at least to stop them from doing the same to someone else. But considering the possibility doesn't mean acting on it automatically, since there's the possibility that they genuinely are in need of help, and then not only is it cruel not to help, but it is similarly cruel and harmful to them to treat them as untrustworthy simply because it's possible they are. Of course there's always the possibility that you'll be screwed over by giving something the benefit of the doubt. For me personally, that's why I like the idea of developing magically, as I said above. There will always be those who are better with magic than you. Honestly, when intervening, I'd make it clear that I would do my best to telepathically search their minds to figure out if they are lying or not (again, this would be tempered by necessity, such as one entity making it clear that they'll destroy me if I try, and the matter apparently being something not warranting that kind of self-sacrifice). And if they don't like it or resist and I notice, well, that's that much less credibility with me. Will that prevent someone much better than me from hiding the truth from me? Of course not. As StormSeeker said we're always limited in how we can look into such things. But that's an issue we're faced with in daily physical life, and in all interactions with entities in general. Does it make it harder to resolve conflicts between two third parties? Sure. But I think that it's far better and more ethical a course of action to do your best with what abilities and means you have then just ignoring them. Now, if something important is going on on my end and I can't interfere, that's another matter, but at that point it's again a matter of necessity, and there too I'd do my best to at least get a general idea of what's going on if I could, to see if matters I was attending to were more important then resolving this conflict.
I kinda agree with the general gist of this, but obviously in context of my above statements, I need to clarify. I agree that the situation should be 'safe', in that my intervention should not bring about harm or suffering to other innocent or undeserving parties. We obviously disagree on what makes it 'best' to intervene - to me by default intervening is more compassionate and altruistic than not intervening, and thus is the best by default. Thus, for me the 'burden of proof' so to speak is in the other direction - that it would be more ethical and best for me to not intervene - and unless some reason presents itself to that effect, my automatic decision would be intervene. Though it's beginning to look more and more like the fact that in the astral, looking the other way and doing nothing is by far the much easier choice, since you're opening yourself to being killed. I think that so long as both parties are generally reasonable and have an empathy/compassion mental faculty it shouldn't be TOO hard to get a peaceful resolution, but whatever. Either way, doing the altruistic thing is never easy, but that's not a reason to not try here, so I fail to see why it shouldn't be in the astral (though I'm sure there's plenty who'll disagree with me on the 'not a reason to not try here' premise...). The immersion scenario StormSeeker provided is a good one too, but it kinda goes the other way as a thought experiment as well. Namely:
My main problem with looking the other way is specifically in cases like this. If you're gonna get a slap on the wrist of a nice whack in the head but will be essentially fine, then I'll gladly tell the thing to suck it up and face up to whatever it did, if I decide it was in the wrong. But there comes a point on the scale of severity of harm/suffering, in my eyes anyway, that no matter what the perpetrating entity did, it doesn't deserve to suffer something that bad. Sometimes, I think, such things are necessary, in situations where more ideal solutions are impossible. If it turns out to be a situation where I decide the thing the pursuer was intending to do to the thief was ethically justified, I'd do it myself. If I think some other response against the thief is ethically justified, I'd do that myself too, if I can get the other entity to be satisfied with that. So just given my personal ethics, there will rarely be a situation where the entity will need to be gotten away from me. If I've gotten involved, I'll do my best to resolve it peacefully. If peacefully is impossible, I'll do my best to reach the best possible result, with best being determined by my ethics, based on as much information of the situation as I have and the respective trustworthiness of that information. Even if I think the 'thief' entity is in the wrong, I'd do my best to keep if from ethically unacceptable degrees of suffering. Now, unfortunately, 'my best' is limited in practice by what I can do without rendering myself incapable of ever aiding other entities, and by what other consequences might arise from me interfering, such as other parties being harmed just because one of the entities gets pissed at me and wants revenge. So there might still be cases where the entity I'm trying to help will be doomed to more suffering/harm then I think is acceptable, but where I really won't be able to do jack shit no matter how much I'd like to. But since my determining factor for whether or not I help and entity will be my own ethical framework, the point where I won't be able to help will also be the point where the entity asking me to help will be equivalent to the entity asking me to screw myself or others over far more than itself, just for its sake. So I'd telepathically transmit that to it's mind (or try to - again, my telepathy is far shittier in practice then is ideal), do my best to calm it down / ease its fear through empathic suggestion, and then go through months of self-dislike and an assortment of negative emotions because I'll keep thinking that if only I had gotten more magically capable by then, or more willing to sacrifice my own well being for another's that entity wouldn't have to suffer like that. I've had something similar happen in physical life, a few years ago, and I genuinely think that I'm at a point now where I'm okay with sacrificing my own self if I feel the other's suffering is ethically unacceptable. But since then I've found out that soul obliteration exists, and now I have a new hurdle - getting myself willing to face that in situations where I think it's ethically justified. But ultimately, I think even in cases where there was a lot of fecal matter primed and ready for quick insertion into the large rotating blades, even though I would do my best to prevent undue suffering from happening to others, I would still at least keep trying to telepathically convince the pursuer entity to be less cruel to the thieving entity. But then I live, progress and improve, and hope that the next time something like this comes up, I'm better equipped to deal with it. Last edited by Psychokinetic Wannabe on Thu Mar 18, 2010 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such. If you cannot demonstrate its excellence, it may well be suspected that you are no proper judge of it.
- William Godwin
Ignore them; this doesn't need to involve you.
If I don't know the real reason of why this whole thing is taking place I would not get involved. I mean in real life if that was happening, I would probably call the cops since I don't want to get in trouble or subdue the wrong person for the wrong reason. And if I was the chaser and or chasee, I would hate it if someone attacked me when the other person is actually at fault. That's just bad manners. Lol. Just because its happening in the astral doesn't mean one must disregard them. :]
Well, in physical life, if you intervened, most states have laws that basically amount to the fact that intervention to prevent a crime is legal, so long as you don't use excessive force and so long as you were acting in good faith. So if you can lay out a line of reasoning for why you thought you were subduing the right person even though it turned out to be the wrong person, and the jury believes it, you're good. Depending on state, though, you might still be liable for a civil suit. Of course, I know more about United States laws than elsewhere, so I don't know how much this applies elsewhere.
T'would piss me off at first, yes. I've thought about this scenario as someone on either side of the chase as well, and honestly I think the feelings of the person you helped if you subdued the right guy would be worth that. I know I personally, if subdued erroneously, would decently okay with it if it was done without permanent damage to me and it was done wisely and intelligently - namely, without just assuming the other party is right and handing me over. And I'd respect every single passerby that tried to intervene, even if they tried to intervene based on incomplete information and thus erroneously picked who to subdue. The beauty of the astral is that you can do so a lot easier, especially if you're the more powerful entity, because you can just shield them both and then go about figuring out what happened. I would argue anyone with a decently well thought out set of ethics, when given the chance to calm down and consider the situation from my perspective, would be decently understanding and okay with me intervening if I did so in a way that showed impartiality, and especially if that intervention was done in a way that didn't actually harm or even hurt either party. Of course, 'well thought out sets of ethics' vary greatly between people, just depending on what they've grown to hold in high regard, so that's probably an over-generalizing guess on my behalf. If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such. If you cannot demonstrate its excellence, it may well be suspected that you are no proper judge of it.
- William Godwin
Say you did subdue them. What happens when both their stories are conflicting and portrays themselves to be right and the other wrong. How do you pass judgement onto the right party. If I had stopped them and let the wrong one go, I would have changed nothing. The one who was wronged would still give chase once let go, because they have a sense of due justice. Without irrefutable evidence and knowledge I would just be part of the problem not the solution. I personally couldn't do that to someone or have that done to me.
I like your sense of empathy in these matters.
Honestly, first we have to separate the physical and the astral, because how realistically doable everything is in each varies, as does the exact nature of the consequences that comes with intervention. In the astral, since that's the focus of this topic, there's two main points I have: One, there's no doubt that their stories will be conflicting. But chances are the lying party will have logical flaws in theirs. If they are good liars, they'll pull that aspect off, but with skilled enough magical abilities, that's something you should be able to see through. We're assuming you subdued them, so chances are you're already more skilled than them, or you're not more able than them but they are humoring you and willing to let you be a mediator. So you have telepathy to try to sense if they are lying. You have retrocognition to view the events as they happened in the past, which I personally never felt certain existed but LordArt certainly speaks about it like it's readily doable. And hopefully you're smart enough to do your best to try to have defenses against people hacking your senses when you do this. Of course even with entities you've subdued, you're doing to have the chance that maybe they're better than you at some very specific things, namely, say, understanding how astral senses work and hacking them. And of course the less skilled you are the less able you will be to approach this ideal way of solving it. But that goes back to the fact that I'll obviously make exceptions in situations where practicality makes it unrealistic that intervention would yield a better solution. Two, and more from an ethics perspective than an application one, is the fact that given my ethics personally, regardless of whether their stories matched up or not, I'd probably see them both as partially in the wrong. Either way, the main issue in this particular hypothetical is that the one entity is fleeing from the other, and is presumably going to be somehow harmed or at least hurt by the pursuer. The thief may very well be in the wrong, or it may very well be the case that I might not be able to be certain 'beyond reasonable doubt' about which story is the true one, but even in those cases, I can still mount a pretty good argument for why the 'thief' entity doesn't deserve to suffer as severe a punishment as the pursuer wishes to dish out. So even if I can't tell whose story is true, I'd still have a case for at least trying to convince the pursuing entity to be less harsh in it's retaliation against it. Plus, from there, I might be able to negotiate some deal where I take responsibility for the 'thief' entity's future actions, then put that entity under surveillance and if it does do something I deem unethical, respond to it myself. This isn't something I'd want to do on a regular basis though... would be too hard to juggle being an astral parole officer with actual living. But like everything else here, it varies with the severity of the punishment the pursuer would like to see done. Other than that, the physical version has similar arguments, it's just that the technicalities of application are different, since instead of astral politics and bigger things coming to beat you if they don't like you sticking your nose in other entities' business, your consequences are more likely to be of the legal type, whether criminal or through a civil suit by the person you downed. I agree with your idea that you couldn't do that to someone. And if I thought it was as unlikely to get to the truth one way or another, I'd probably shift closer towards your position. But of course, I also couldn't leave a possibly innocent entity to suffer at the hands of some bigger entity, or even leave a guilty entity to suffer a fate that doesn't fit the crime just because the bigger entity happens to be pissed enough to want that. But frak if I know all the pitfalls of astral politics yet. So I have to say as a disclaimer, this is based on what I've learned here and what few experiences I had with minor entities. I do stand by my ethical principles from which I derive all of this - namely compassion for all and logic-driven decision-making from there - but I won't pretend I fully understand the exact nuances of astral politics or life, so the above may change as I grow to learn more. I think the general gist will stay the same, but the exact willingness and readiness to intervene will change with my abilities. For instance, at this exact moment, I probably couldn't help no matter how much I wanted to, because even if I somehow managed to browse the astral that well, I can't do telepathy or retrocognition well enough to be particularly useful, nor do I have the technical know-how to help one entity against the other even if I had to. If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such. If you cannot demonstrate its excellence, it may well be suspected that you are no proper judge of it.
- William Godwin
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