Regarding Terminus (TV show) and Is it okay to be evil?
They really did a good job at making me feel bad for those Terminus people.
The scene at the end where the bandits had the men and women in the cars selecting who to rape next makes you feel for them and gives them a reason on why they are the way they are. At first I thought it was just a big bandit scheme, but it's more than that: it's the result of evil.
Now this begs the question: is it okay to be evil if it means keeping others from doing evil things too you.
I'd like to hear your opinions below, but here is mine:
Yes and no. It gives you an excuse, but it's not okay. Rick's group done nothing wrong, and Terminus treated them as if they were the very same bandits that raped them for weeks on end. At the end, they pissed off the wrong people, as Rick said. Now they are dead or on the run, or walkers. See, everything is about fate and chance in a sense. Bad things happen to good people sometimes and vise versa. Sometimes good things happen to good people and sometimes bad things happen to bad people. It's not as black and white as people make it out to be, that good people die and bad people survive. Look at Terminus. They were bad people (for reasons, but still bad), and for a while, yes, they did survive... but they are still dead now.
So, whether you are a survivalist or not, in the end, fate has to be on our side to survive to the end. Thoughts?
Comments
i'd never rape and only kill if i had to.
that episode just made me realize how depressing the walking dead is and question why everyone's so into it.
The majority of characters surviving the apocalypse are evil in a sense, they have killed others for their own protection and the protection of others, but just because it's got some right doesn't mean it doesn't have any wrong. Everything each character does can be judged either way.
In The Walking Dead you have to have a bit of evil in order to survive, hardly any characters haven't killed a living individual that we know of since the apocalypse began. Raping people is pure evil in my opinion, the bandits raped the people at terminus just for their own pleasure, a selfish act and a horrid one too, but killing someone... well... that's completely arguable, sometimes it's kill or be killed... other times it's choose to kill or choose to give hope that humanity hasn't reached the bitter end.
When thinking of whether a character's acts are evil or not you have to take into account the situation, their actions, others involvement, possible outcomes, the actual outcome, the choice itself since just because you can die doesn't mean you HAVE to kill someone else and each character's state of mind.
I don't I'd ever be evil, but I'd only kill someone in self defense. But I'd probably die doing that.
What episode was it?
the season 5 opener.
It doesn't really matter, you're gonna lose your humanity and innocence at one point or another in the apocalypse. If not, you'll just end up dying by being too sensitive in the given situation. Not saying you have to be evil though, just don't hold onto anything that will slow you down mentally.
People here can say they wouldn't do this or that. But if a real zombie apocalypse happened, they themselves would be surprised of what they could do in order to survive. Once the apocalypse begins, humanity falls out the window, it's like he said, butcher or the cattle. Nice guys always finish last.
kill if you have to.... rape??? idk why the fuck you would need to rape for..??
you wouldn't need to but it happens in the series so.
in the series yeah it happens, and it would in real life too.. but I was putting in as if it happened in real life. whats the necessity of raping someone in the ZA??? killing yes.
oh hey man i don't know. anything goes man. people are no longer repressed by social cues. right and wrong become very blurred.
yeah right man, shit would turn medieval. it is just that I wouldn't see a point. but I guess it would still mean the same that it mean even today. the feeling of ultimate power over someone.
I think it doesn't matter if one is evil or not; In the ZA, like you said, anything can happen to anyone. Eventually, a good or bad person's luck will finally run out, leaving them dead or undead. In the ZA, one cannot keep power indefinitely, so no one could be evil or good for long; "In the end, the dead always win," -Molly
Edit: ONLY IN THE ZA IS THIS TRUE FOR ME.
yeah i don't get the point either.
I don't know, but Gareth is really hot.
Edit: And dead.
Goddamnit.
Being good does not equate to being nice. Though being nice doesn't make you only equate to good, it can be a factor.
Eating people isn't right, no matter what.
No. No it's not. The era of Hitler and Stalin should have taught us that much.
It wasn't depressing at all. I felt bad, sure, for the people of Terminus, but it just made me realize how much humanity is lost. It made wonder now that members of Rick's group have been through the same/similar situation as the Termites, how dark are they gonna get.
You didn't read it all.
Is it okay to be evil if it means preventing others from being evil to you? I just didn't want a long-ass title.
well it was depressing to me.
I think it's hard to define evil during a ZA. Most who have survived this long proably have committed some sort of evil action just to survive but does that make them evil? I would easily call rape an evil act because there is nothing to gain from it. They are just doing a horrible thing to someone else because they can. The eating people part can also be called an evil act but the purpose of it was to survive so does that make them evil people?
Or is the world during a ZA make it a evil world and people just have to do evil things to survive?
If given the choice, would you choose to die as cattle or survive with the Terminus group as a cannibal?
Does it make you evil to choose to survive?
I remember after the show, during Talking Dead, they mentioned how Terminus began as a place of safety but when they let in a group of bad people, they then realized that now, in order to survive, it's either be the cattle or the butcher. After a while all the killing became just common, cut-off from emotion. They wernt doing it for pleasure, it had just become a job to provide food for the community.
It's like progressing beyond evil and into simple survival.
We all like to think we are above doing such things to fellow human beings because we think about it in today's world, but if in a ZA, after everything that's happened it may not be such a shocking topic.
Remember Lee and Kenny letting the girl get eaten so they could scavenge more supplies? One could call that an evil action to allow someone to be killed. Other's would see it as doing what was needed for our group to survive.
Yes that scene is determined by your choice and maybe your Lee shot her so she wouldnt suffer but now your group has less to survive on.
I am NOT an advocate for cannibalism, but I do try to look at certain things from different perspectives to try to understand what and how people behave. It's kinda a "know your enemy" type thing. Realizing that the Terminus people may not see themselves as evil, just survivors and knowing you cannot reason with them because they see what they do as necessary, not just a evil act.
If captured by Terminus, and given the option to join or die, what would you do?
1: Join them
2: let them kill/eat you
While I sit here writing this and trying to give my answer, I have to admit I am tending towards Join them, in the hope that someday I will have the option to escape. A means to an end!
I did read it. I just couldn't really get a handle on what you were saying, and that mostly has to do with how you phrased yourself.
Choosing "who to rape", instead of simply raping everyone, isn't a compromise. It isn't about survival. It isn't a lesser evil. You can't bargain with the Devil without becoming the Devil yourself, no matter how hard you try to justify it.
(For the record, I haven't watched the show since Darabont left, so I haven't actually seen the sequence you were talking about.)
It's sort of an irrelevant question. Who decides good and evil? If there is a God, then God does (I'll digress here and reference Sartre, who said humans can still be free even if there is a God, but the question becomes significantly more complicated.) However, if the individual is to decide it then it is subsequently up to them which actions are moral are immoral. The subsequent question is their maliability - if Thou Shalt Not Kill is a maxim, then killing, even in self-defense, is wrong. If, like the law, it is situational, then it can be permitted.
To go back to Sartre, he has a play "The Flies," in which Orestes returns to Argos, and ultimately defies Zeus - knowing that he is the supreme god. The other alternative is Kierkegaard, who suggest that Abraham had free will to make the choice and believe the angel was an angel, when it could well be a devil, and sacrifice Isaac. Any question of valuation needs to question the source of such valuation and the logic (or absurdity) behind it.
My thoughts on the topic of this thread crammed into a nutshell.
I haven't seen the show, but I suppose you guys could extend this to the St. Johns. There are subtle hints that the St. Johns went through an extremely traumatic experience as their employees were whittled away by bandits and starvation, and that they hardened into cannibals out of pragmatism. (Then again, resorting to cannibalism on a farm after only three months? They've gone through a lot of cattle.)
I dont feel bad for them at all. No matter what happened to them, they dont have the right to lure people to them with false promises so they can slaughter them and eat them! I dont even know how they got to that point. And did you see all those kid's toys stacked up? No one was safe. Those people were just plain sick.
I think the point of the show is you can maintain your humanity through the worst of it. Its what our group struggles with all the time. Like Glenn said, 'This is who we are.' I dont even see Rick and the group eating people, no matter how bad things get.
Fate doesn't exist.
Well, what makes a person evil? Capturing and eating people? Directly of indirectly killing people? Shooting children at a fight to the death + zombies? It isn't about evil, or right or wrong, it's about doing what you need to do to survive. The selling point, for me, is if the things which hurt/endanger/kill others are necessary. Killing and eating by passers is not a staple of survivability, so I would say they shouldn't have done it. There is a difference between defending yourself from the acts others might enact on you and purposefully setting into motion acts against others.
I dont care how good looking he is, he is a piece of crap that needs to die.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ5290-0lw0
I don't feel sorry at all for the 'Terminators'.
Sure, bad and evil things happened to them, and when they got their own way, what happened?
They did bad and evil things.
In the end justice prevailed.
I don't think walkers know that as much as we do.
Terminus included.
Why should I chill? He eats people. What, you like him?
Dude, The cannibals ate Bob's leg, that's the most inhumane thing I can imagine.
Fucking hell, you need to actually chill.
I said he was hot, never said I liked his character. But actually, I do like his character. I think he makes a really great villain, and to my standards, a hot one too.
Is there any harm in saying that? Because if there is, that's your problem. Not mine.
10/10*
get your shit together
I think you're the one who needs to chill.
The irony hurts so bad.
My god.