Right.
It has been brought to my attention that certain people disagree with me on some fundamental issues at hand here.
So, let's explore for a moment
why I want serious action on Kyouko.
We saw today that the full extent of Mami's trauma is more than enough to interfere with basic facets of life such as school. We collectively were OK with this given the circumstances -- and her perfect attendance -- but I'd like everyone to consider for a moment that
no, bringing up Mami's traumas at lunch daily is not a good plan if we want her to stay in school. If you happen to disagree with that, I would refer you to AuraTwilight, who will probably have some creative invectives for his response.
The issue at hand then becomes, "how do we involve Mami in the decision making process surrounding Kyouko without ruining her school experience?"
One very simple answer to this is that we don't do this shit at lunch or in the morning. Problem solved, woohoo.
I am
not, however, a massive fan of the idea that we should subject Mami to continuous progress reports about Kyouko for an unspecified amount of time, pegged subjectively by
@Redshirt Army to a date I'm inclined to accept of "maybe a little more than two weeks from now."
Do I think it's doing the wrong thing to keep Mami involved in issues involving Kyouko? No. Above all we should not sacrifice Mami's agency, because the moment we start doing that is the moment she starts happily going through life at our side and in our shadow. That's not acceptable. Easy, but not acceptable.
Do I think it's doing the wrong thing to keep reopening Mami's traumas with regards to Kyouko? Yes. I think it's completely unconscionable. And
more importantly, I think that anyone who would make an argument that doing so consistently will somehow "help" Mami get through her traumas is essentially promoting abuse. The ethical argument is that if the treatment does not have a reasonable chance of helping the patient,
you do not apply the treatment. That is basic ethics as it is understood in the US today. Constantly reminding Mami of how Kyouko left her and of all the bad memories and complexes associated with that is
not somehow magically going to help her get over it. All it does is harm her.
Are these two statements reconcilable?
Not at the present time, obviously. Not as-is. General opinion is that the former trumps the latter interms of importance, I agree completely.
And so I ask myself, every time this comes up, "
does this have to remain this way?"
And
every single time the answer I find is "no."
We have methods by which we could attempt to alleviate, in minority or in majority, the degree to which bringing up Kyouko subjects Mami to trauma. None of them would compromise Mami's agency.
Not a one.
> We could explain our metaknowledge of Kyouko's motives to Mami.
This was something I brought up many months ago at least. There was a great deal of opposition to this on the grounds that it was a violation of Kyouko's privacy and therefore unethical. I relented at the time largely because I felt there were better, similarly quick methods, but I
strongly believe that it is a
lesser crime to commit such a breach than to permit this continuity of trauma.
> We could talk to Kyouko.
I think this is self-explanatory. Metabombs, lichbombs,
whatever, any of it is all just a subset. We have
never made any attempt to talk to Kyouko about Mami's issues beyond giving her brief summaries of some happenings. We have never made any effort to convince Kyouko to make up with Mami. For a time, this was largely necessary, see Kyouko's initial reaction to us on finding out we were staying with Mami. I no longer believe that this is currently infeasible, through any variety of methods. I undestand that some people believe otherwise, but my response to such a possibility is very simple: if you believe that this is infeasible, you should be obligated to find another way, rather than accepting the infliction of further harm on Mami.
This is the long and short of my motivations here. Reviewing Mami's traumas on a daily basis is not something I consider reasonable, ethical, unavoidable, or intelligent, for any extended period of time. Two weeks and then some is not a long time from most perspectives, certainly: but when a resolution could be affected in a space of
hours or less, it is a relative eternity. The only viable counterargument seems to me to be that the lasting consequences of action taken to alleviate would be more drastic than the suffering thereby alleviated. A discussion with Kyouko could plausibly go such a way if done poorly; that social link being severed would not be acceptable. A breach of Kyouko's provacy by disclosing motives to Mami? I do not see it. I do not.
I am not here to push for solutions which will have large negatives impacts; if I suggest such a thing, I expect to be criticized. Clearly I did not do enough in my earlier post to make it clear that I did not think we should perform certain actions which I laid out, despite stating in the post that I did mot believe we should perform said actions. The sum total of my suggestions in that post, at the end, was that we should make a point of consistently relaying to Kyouko the negative effects of Mami's past isolation. The only thing I
actually suggested, at the end of much rambling, was that we should mention to Kyouko before leaving today Kazumi & Co. and how much of an effect their visit has had on Mami, and possibly how she has reacted over the past couple days towards the events surrounding that.
In hindsight, my feeling is that I should have suggested
more than that. Because inaction on this? It's just
wrong.
Because of this, I will
not suffer being accused of "fearmongering." Out of everything I've said and done today, I do
not believe that I have commited any action which was an attempt to "instill fear", let alone an attempt to do such so as to push an agenda. Anyone who can demonstrate otherwise will earn a public apology, but anyone who wants to level further such accusations at me without such demonstration -- well, at any rate, I dearly hope nothing of that sort will happen, and there's not much more I can say or do about it, is there?