- Location
- At the end of the world
[X] The purpose of protection is to preserve Choice, both your own and of those you shield.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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[X ] The purpose of protection is to preserve Choice, both your own and of those you shield.
This feels more thematic. More fluid and flexible and caring for those she is defending.
[ ] The purpose of protection is to preserve your World, to maintain the community, the things and people you have.
While this one feels way off. Defense for the sake of "Preservation" sounds so stagnant. Just.... an uncomfortable feeling when I read this and try to apply it to her.
This feels more thematic. More fluid and flexible and caring for those she is defending.
[ ] The purpose of protection is to preserve your World, to maintain the community, the things and people you have.
While this one feels way off. Defense for the sake of "Preservation" sounds so stagnant. Just.... an uncomfortable feeling when I read this and try to apply it to her.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I find it funny how people keep pointing towards preservation as something bad when both options use that word. Using that idea of preservation, I find it worse to preserve an idea rather than people, because preserving ideas and ways of life leads to entrenched traditions.
But I digress. That definition of preservation qeird, when we have one that fits the idea of motion and change. Preservation is protecting the young and new when they are weak, so that they may eventually grow into something better.
I don't think this would be possessive at all. Ling Qi isn't that possessive. She thinks she is, but she's not a reliable narrator when talking about her faults.
Plus I think it's pretty clear that the people you have are Home (because a home is the people who make it up) and Community (Because you have love and obligation towards them, and love is binding and possessive on its own)
But I digress. That definition of preservation qeird, when we have one that fits the idea of motion and change. Preservation is protecting the young and new when they are weak, so that they may eventually grow into something better.
We literally just had a tribulation where LQ accepted that people control each other, and that's okay. What matters is that there's freedom of choice.
I don't think this would be possessive at all. Ling Qi isn't that possessive. She thinks she is, but she's not a reliable narrator when talking about her faults.
Plus I think it's pretty clear that the people you have are Home (because a home is the people who make it up) and Community (Because you have love and obligation towards them, and love is binding and possessive on its own)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ling Qi absolutely is possessive. She's extraordinarily clingy with people she actually cares about, and very inclined to 'protecting them from themselves'...at least she is when she lets herself be. She's gotten a lot better at ameliorating those impulses over the course of the quest, which is exactly why I feel that anything that inclines her to backslide is to be avoided.
And 'the things and people you have' is one of the most possessive phrases I've ever heard, right down to comparing people to things like you can have them in the same way. Ling Qi certainly wouldn't suddenly start treating people like things due to one phrase like this and I'm not saying she would, but it's a small step in that direction and we need to take every opportunity to step as far away as possible from any inkling of the treating of people like they are property.
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I don't really have a problem with Choice winning, but I find it really miffling how exaggerated the arguments against World are. Specially because they are entirely based in the presence of the word "have".
I guess no one can ever say "I have a girlfriend" or "I have two sons" because then they would be possesive? Saying that the World option equiparates people to objects is plain ridiculous.
It almost seems as if people think that the World option would lead to Ling Qi pulling a Zeqing and freeze people's soul for eternity or something.
Ling Qi being possessive of people is one of those things that are exacerbated by her inner narrative even though it doesn't correlate with her actions. Sure, she cares for her friends and family and would like to always have them by her side, but she doesn't take away people's agency to ensure that happens or anything like that.
I guess no one can ever say "I have a girlfriend" or "I have two sons" because then they would be possesive? Saying that the World option equiparates people to objects is plain ridiculous.
It almost seems as if people think that the World option would lead to Ling Qi pulling a Zeqing and freeze people's soul for eternity or something.
Ling Qi being possessive of people is one of those things that are exacerbated by her inner narrative even though it doesn't correlate with her actions. Sure, she cares for her friends and family and would like to always have them by her side, but she doesn't take away people's agency to ensure that happens or anything like that.
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My mean reason for not going for World is that, it seems too conservative.
Keep the status quo, if you will, instead of being open for new things, even if you don't opt in.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, it literally says 'the things and people you have.' That's a pretty direct equating of having one with having the other, and thus with owning people, as wording goes. That probably a bit too extreme an interpretation, but the whole insight has a deeply paternalistic vibe where it is up to Ling Qi to decide how her things and her people are protected. It's a feudal lord's attitude on protectiveness, and for all that Ling Qi is technically a feudal noble, I don't think we want her thinking like one in that way.
Of course it won't, it's a single concept definition, not even a proper insight. But it's one small step in the general direction of that sort of issue, and I don't think we should take even the smallest of steps in that direction.
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globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
[x] The purpose of protection is to preserve Choice, both your own and of those you shield.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If it was early Ling Qi, who was possessive of her very first friends after living on the streets for how long, I'd agree.
But current LQ is not like that. She still thinks she's possessive because of her actions in Forge, but she's really not. She doesn't force people to make decisions; she merely tries to show them different perspectives and respects their choices, like with Su Ling. She's protective, but not overprotective. Her experiences and arguments with Zhengui have pushed her away from that. She hasn't been clingy to anyone recently - not with Zhengui, Meizhen, the SuSu duo, etc. A lot of her loved ones have their own lives and other connections outside of her, and she's comfortable and okay with that.
Sometimes, she has a tendency to grab things and not let go, but she doesn't do that. As Sixiang said, she actually holds herself back too much. As people like Zhengui and Diao Linqiin have said, she gives too much; should take and let others give.
The only thing "possessive" about Ling Qi is that she sometimes refers to things as "hers". But well, as the recent tribulation has taught her, relationships are a two-way street. She's also "theirs" because relationships bind people together, for better or worse.
Classifying option 2 as the first step in backsliding is hyperbolic. This is a new concept. It's a fresh, new thing, and will only grow and be tempered from here. And when it does, it'll come in contact with a half-developed framework of other concepts and insights and grow to fit that.
Ling Qi literally has insights and concepts that state her actions affect others, that she must always question and reveal inconsistencies to people (never force) to bring change, that she must always consider people's choices, that everyone has worth - from the lowest mortal to the highest cultivator- and thus deserve respect, etc. Saying one phrase will push her away from all of this and start undoing literal years of development, both on-story and irl, is doom-saying.
Want is very fundamental to Ling Qi, and it's not a bad thing. She's tempered it well. She's seen what too much want does, with Zeqing, Madame Grey, Yan Renshu, etc, and she's taken lessons from them.
Edit: I get focusing on semantics. I really do. A lot of my arguments rely on semantics. But there are other things to consider too - Ling Qi's actions vs her thoughts of herself, her Way and what she's developed so far, the novelty of the concept, etc. Both options are equally good and valid.
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Enthusiast#117
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- United States
[ ] The purpose of protection is to preserve Choice, both your own and of those you shield.
This one feels kind of like an attempt to twist a neutral truth into a positive thing.
[X] The purpose of protection is to preserve your World, to maintain the community, the things and people you have.
This one feels more philosophically accurate to me.
But in both cases they seem a bit narrowly focused, though I feel the second one is less so. As if the question being answered was "What is the purpose of Ling Qi protecting something" instead of "What is the purpose of anyone protecting anything?" Because protecting things is as natural as breathing. Protection is part of the natural world.
Think about your skin. It's your default regenerating first line of defense against the wear and tear of everyday life. It means your muscles and fat don't have to worry so much about bumps and scrapes and sunburn and windchill.
Think about your skeleton. It's a rigid support structure that acts as a strong enough stable foundation the rest of you can hang off of and rely upon to weather stresses big and small without deforming too much. It provides stability so that fragile things like your brain can keep existing, and that specialized things like muscles and tendons can attach to and depend on.
If you lived in a vault in space and never were exposed to hazards, or gravity, or needed to move around, then having skin or a skeleton would be pointless.
The whole point of these organs are to provide basic defenses against basic hazards of life, because life is full of hazards.
Life is figuratively acidic. It wears away at everything over time. Anything that isn't protected somehow gets broken down and repurposed by something else.
Plants that can't defend themselves get eaten by wildlife or choked out by other plants, unless a gardener puts in time and effort to keep those things away.
Individuals that are defended by nothing and no-one either learn to defend themselves or are preyed upon.
An unprotected forest gets taken apart by various industries.
If something is to keep existing, then effort has to be put in to defend it by someone or something.
To protect something is to decide that you value it enough to put in your own effort to keep it around. Because if nobody does, it will surely disappear sooner or later.
So everything that lives protects itself, and sometimes other things too. Predators defend their territory. Birds defend their nests. People defend their communities. Because they value those things, and if they didn't defend them, those things wouldn't survive for long. Protection is fundamental to life.
I feel like making it about choices, narrows the scope of it.
Or at least that phrasing it as if you need a reason to defend yourself or the people around you misses the point.
Protection is fundamental to life. You defend the things that matter to you. So I feel the question really should be something like "What matters to you to the point that you would defend it?"
So to me it's a question of whether "defending people's choices" is all encompassing enough to describe everything that Ling Qi would ever want to protect. And if not, whether "the World, the community, and the things and people you have" is a more complete picture of that or less of one.
I think that while "defending Choice" could be stretched to encompass all the various ways people might need to be defended, that's the sort of narrowing of perspective that creates blind spots. Perceiving Protection through the single lens of "defending Choice" seems like the sort of narrowing sacrifice of alternative perspectives that Ling Qi sees in older cultivators and would like to avoid herself.
While, "The World, the community, and the things and people you have" are at least three different lenses to look at things with. It may still be a narrowing of perspective, but it seems like a lesser one.
This one feels kind of like an attempt to twist a neutral truth into a positive thing.
[X] The purpose of protection is to preserve your World, to maintain the community, the things and people you have.
This one feels more philosophically accurate to me.
But in both cases they seem a bit narrowly focused, though I feel the second one is less so. As if the question being answered was "What is the purpose of Ling Qi protecting something" instead of "What is the purpose of anyone protecting anything?" Because protecting things is as natural as breathing. Protection is part of the natural world.
Think about your skin. It's your default regenerating first line of defense against the wear and tear of everyday life. It means your muscles and fat don't have to worry so much about bumps and scrapes and sunburn and windchill.
Think about your skeleton. It's a rigid support structure that acts as a strong enough stable foundation the rest of you can hang off of and rely upon to weather stresses big and small without deforming too much. It provides stability so that fragile things like your brain can keep existing, and that specialized things like muscles and tendons can attach to and depend on.
If you lived in a vault in space and never were exposed to hazards, or gravity, or needed to move around, then having skin or a skeleton would be pointless.
The whole point of these organs are to provide basic defenses against basic hazards of life, because life is full of hazards.
Life is figuratively acidic. It wears away at everything over time. Anything that isn't protected somehow gets broken down and repurposed by something else.
Plants that can't defend themselves get eaten by wildlife or choked out by other plants, unless a gardener puts in time and effort to keep those things away.
Individuals that are defended by nothing and no-one either learn to defend themselves or are preyed upon.
An unprotected forest gets taken apart by various industries.
If something is to keep existing, then effort has to be put in to defend it by someone or something.
To protect something is to decide that you value it enough to put in your own effort to keep it around. Because if nobody does, it will surely disappear sooner or later.
So everything that lives protects itself, and sometimes other things too. Predators defend their territory. Birds defend their nests. People defend their communities. Because they value those things, and if they didn't defend them, those things wouldn't survive for long. Protection is fundamental to life.
I feel like making it about choices, narrows the scope of it.
Or at least that phrasing it as if you need a reason to defend yourself or the people around you misses the point.
Protection is fundamental to life. You defend the things that matter to you. So I feel the question really should be something like "What matters to you to the point that you would defend it?"
So to me it's a question of whether "defending people's choices" is all encompassing enough to describe everything that Ling Qi would ever want to protect. And if not, whether "the World, the community, and the things and people you have" is a more complete picture of that or less of one.
I think that while "defending Choice" could be stretched to encompass all the various ways people might need to be defended, that's the sort of narrowing of perspective that creates blind spots. Perceiving Protection through the single lens of "defending Choice" seems like the sort of narrowing sacrifice of alternative perspectives that Ling Qi sees in older cultivators and would like to avoid herself.
While, "The World, the community, and the things and people you have" are at least three different lenses to look at things with. It may still be a narrowing of perspective, but it seems like a lesser one.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I strongly disagree with this point. I think 'defending choice' as one's only moral principle actually encompasses almost all real world morality that anyone should care about other than active kindness (certainly everything that should fall under protection). Like, murder, theft, assault of all kinds, abuse of all kinds, all of them are very directly stealing choices from the victims. This is also true on a more systemic level...poverty, for example, steals choice as well, as Ling Qi knows all too well. I legitimately cannot think of an actual damaging thing someone can do that is not a theft of choice.
This is actually one of my main real world moral principles and I've thought about it a lot and I don't see how it narrows anything.
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Enthusiast#117
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Because it's not just "defending choice" as an abstract moral principle that applies to everyone, it's explicitly defending the choices of Ling Qi and the ones she shields.
That's a subgroup who get their choices defended. As I was pointing out earlier, the world is a competitive place. It would be unfortunate if Ling Qi were to decide to proactively defend the ability to make choices of her and her ingroup by removing the ability of people not of that ingroup to make choices that might harm them.
Life isn't quite a zero sum game, but it is true that oppressors have more choices than the oppressed. If your only principle is maximizing the choices of one group...
Whereas the other option includes defending the World and the Community, both of which are very strongly about interconnectedness of all participants.
It means that the bar to be considered as a person worth considering the choices of is "part of my world" or "part of my community" rather than "someone I am responsible for".
Defending your people by making the world a better place for them to live in rather than more directly shielding them from harm.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is true, and definitely a potential issue...but it's an issue with both options, not specifically the Choice one.
It's pretty specifically her World and her Community. That's not the whole world, that's very much and very specifically her people alone and says as much. The distinction you're trying to make is not there, both versions of Protection are specific to her people, both because Ling Qi is not capable of caring about everyone, and because she is not powerful enough to protect everyone, but both versions are very focused on the people she is responsible for and nobody else.
- Location
- Canada
[X] The purpose of protection is to preserve Choice, both your own and of those you shield
Enthusiast#117
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You may be right. I could be reading too much into "World, as in "the actual world she lives in" instead of her... "experiential world", maybe?
I guess it's possible that the second option is just describing the same group three different ways, but I doubt it.
If it isn't, then I feel the fact that it draws distinctions between the three groups is important.
Her experiential World still encompasses the province she lives in I think, even if what qualifies as her Community is a lot more restricted, and the people that qualify as her people even more so.
Her duties and obligations to these different groups are different. I think it'd be good for her to acknowledge that she's responsible for defending them in different ways and to different degrees.
To me the second option implicitly identifies them as different groups to be defended differently, whereas the first implicitly divides people between "people she shields" and "people she doesn't".
- Pronouns
- He
I don't know, Sixing seemed pretty upset with us for not letting people cling back during our recent nightmare tribulation. Even after making our present choices she still holds people at arm's length to some degree.
I don't think it's too helpful to get hung up on how this concept could be overly narrowed at this stage. Whether or not that happens will depend on the development of a lot more things, and this is only really talking about the basic concept of Protection here.
And like, as noted, even a White can't be everywhere. Everyone is choosing what they're protecting. That's unavoidably part of the concept and doesn't necessarily mean throwing everyone else under the bus.
Indeed, it should be noted that much of LQ's morality is already built around a kind of sense of enlightened self-interest here where she wants to help Renxiang make the Emerald Seas a better place because she thinks that that will produce a better environment for her and her family to live in even if she doesn't think much about people beyond that (and then beats herself up about that unnecessarily). Heck, much of her basic development and focus is essentially just "no man is an island".
Broadly speaking though people beyond LQ's immediate interests matter because #EvenWalkingAloneFootfallsEchoBeyondYourHearing and just because she wants to feel like she's not being a dick.
This is why I favor reading it as more along the line of being about allowing them to continue to have the opportunity to flourish and pursue happiness.
And like, as noted, even a White can't be everywhere. Everyone is choosing what they're protecting. That's unavoidably part of the concept and doesn't necessarily mean throwing everyone else under the bus.
Indeed, it should be noted that much of LQ's morality is already built around a kind of sense of enlightened self-interest here where she wants to help Renxiang make the Emerald Seas a better place because she thinks that that will produce a better environment for her and her family to live in even if she doesn't think much about people beyond that (and then beats herself up about that unnecessarily). Heck, much of her basic development and focus is essentially just "no man is an island".
Broadly speaking though people beyond LQ's immediate interests matter because #EvenWalkingAloneFootfallsEchoBeyondYourHearing and just because she wants to feel like she's not being a dick.
This is why I think it's important to think about what "choice" actually means to LQ. Because it's not just "oh people can make choices". It's being able to make the choices that you want to, that will make you happy. Which is why she associates it with Power.
This is why I favor reading it as more along the line of being about allowing them to continue to have the opportunity to flourish and pursue happiness.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's absolutely talking about two groups at most (her world and her community)...the third bit is defining what her community is (ie: 'the things and people you have.') And it says her duties towards those two groups are identical (preserve and maintain are, in fact, synonyms).
It's debatably broader than the Choice option, but I'm not seeing it...Ling Qi has already taken responsibility for the entire Emerald Seas in her plans with Renxiang and attempts to give it a national identity. The people she's responsible for are thus gonna include the whole of the Emerald Seas long before she's done.
The Choice option also speaks about 'those you shield', which is actually potentially a much bigger group than 'your people'. Ling Qi is definitely already shielding entire cities when fighting in the wars, after all.
Oh, it's absolutely one sided and on her terms that she is clingy, which is one of the reasons it's an unhealthy behavior pattern. The tribulation also specifically made her a lot better at this aspect of her issues.
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