A Meditation on Evil

[Gothica]

On this last day, being a sensitive, introverted type, I must unburden myself.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I will here state that what is about to happen tonight is evil. Not high school evil, as some wit once said, but seriously, truly, evil.

Quantitatively it obviously isn't an evil that is on the scale of the Holocaust, or firebombing civilians, or nerve gas, or world hunger and starving babies. But qualitatively it has the same nature.

This franchise was a moneymaker for its investors. It provided scores of people with jobs, which evidently were good ones. It provided--to use coarse business terms--a valuable service to thousands of dedicated and satisfied customers, many of whom would have continued to spend hundreds of dollars a year on the product indefinitely. With proper advertisement it could have been more profitable still. Win/win/win.

But to most of these people, devs and players alike, it was not merely a means of making a living or a valuable service. It was a community. A place of friendships, of mutual support--not merely in teams, but support through real life troubles and job loss and breakups and sicknesses and deaths. A community where people spent hours and hours --hundreds if not thousands of them--investing in, shaping, and molding their on-line alter-egos.

Plato, or perhaps Philo of Alexandria, is supposed to have said "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." I know that I have had hard battles of my own in recent years, and I further know that they pale in comparison to the battles of other players of my acquaintance. But when we passed into the borders of Paragon City, we found people there who treated us with kindness and as kindred spirits, perhaps because they, too, were seeking a few hours' refuge from their own battles. This kindness is worth diamonds. This horrible, screwed-up world needs as much of it--every ounce of it--it can get.

Of course there were squabbles. Families aren't perfect. But in the six years I played the game, I can't remember more then two or three times I heard or experienced anything that approached harshness or unpleasantness, and all of those, on reflection, were based on good-faith misunderstandings.

But these few occasions are swamped by the fact that day after day, night after night, I interacted and teamed with people who treated me kindly (much more so than I, who was bullied very badly in my youth, have typically been treated by people in what is tritely called "real life") and who I tried to treat kindly in return. I hope I always succeeded. If I failed, I ask forgiveness of this community. In "real life," many of these people are likely of different ethnicities and skin colors and politics and religions than my own. In other civilizations people with such differences are killing each other now, today, precisely because of those differences. In Paragon City, such differences aren't even discussed, much less fought over. How rare a thing is that in human history?

I hope you're seeing by now the amazingly humane nature of Paragon City and what happens there, for all of the baddies we slaughter. Even those baddies know it's in good sport. We may kill Hamidon, and kill him again and yet again, but he always obligingly returns, unbloodied and ready to do battle once more. It puts me in the mind of what Sergeant Barry Benson, of General Robert E. Lee's army, wrote after the war: "Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say, Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?"

It is odd to think of Hamidon, of Nemesis, of Lord Recluse (or Statesmen for you redsiders) and all other baddies as friends, and yet, they are, and we do. We will recall them, in the future, with talking and laughter and cheers.

Such is the world--universe, community, family--we have made together.

Such is the world--university, community, family--that nameless and faceless businessmen half a planet away will destroy in a little less than twelve hours.

To this date, so far as I am aware, whatever so-called rationale that NCSoft has for killing this game, this community, this place of kindness, remains a mystery. To all appearances it is not a rationale, but irrational. And that is where the evil comes in.

Entropy is not evil. But when a human agency apes it, to visit chaos upon order without apparent rhyme or reason, to kill community and friendship and kindness, to take away something that costs that agency nothing, but which cannot be valued and of which there is not nearly enough in the world--that is evil. This goes beyond even a mere criticism of the evil corporate bosses. It doesn't matter if such a thing is the act of an individual, a society, a corporation, a political party, a religion, or a government. An attack on humanity--for this is just such an attack, if even a small and insignificant one in the great scheme of things--is always evil.

Ever since the announcement I have been put in the mind of the one book I truly wish I had never read, one in which I have unfortunately developed a morbid fascination: Nevil Shute's On the Beach. It is a book about the aftermath of nuclear holocaust, when clouds of radiation are inexorably sweeping over what remains of the world. It is clear from the book's beginning that, short of a miracle, all life on earth will be extinguished within a matter of months. The book focuses on how its characters come to grips (or don't) not just with their own impending mortality, but the death of their entire civilization, the end of the world, which they can predict to within a few weeks. I'm sure I don't need to point out the parallels. They have weighed heavily on me for three months. I have not spoken of it until now to spare you these same morbid thoughts. But now the day has arrived at last and we're living it.

No one would argue that the self-inflicted and completely purposeless death of the planet by nuclear war and radiation would not be evil. Not only is it the end of the world, but the end of the world for no good reason or purpose. It is senseless destruction. That is the biggest parallel between that book and what is happening to our beloved Paragon City, and I have not been able to get it out of my mind these past three months as the clock has ticked on.

If what happens to the world in On the Beach is evil in macrocosm, then, how is what we are facing today not evil in microcosm--an evil that, while passing unnoticed for most of the world, is one that is having strong effects on most of us here, and devastating effects on a few of the more vulnerable members of our CoH family? And with my severe depression and shyness in "real life," I must admit to being one of the latter.

There isn't really much one can say in answer to that. There isn't much I can add. NCSoft is acting like a blind force of nature. One can't reason with a hurricane or argue with a tornado. But at least hurricanes and tornadoes aren't evil. But in acting in a similarly mindless and destructive way, NCSoft, a human agency, certainly is.

NCSoft doesn't want reason, or logic, or dialogue. It doesn't want accommodation, or compromise, or an amicable solution. It doesn't want understanding, or to offer comfort or solace. Apparently it doesn't even want something as crass as our money. It wants us, as a community, to die.

And it has the power to inflict our death.

And tonight, in the dead of night, the time reserved for executions, it will inflict our death. And because of its blind unreasoning whim, there is not a damned thing we can do about it. All of our humanity is useless in the face of NCSoft's inhumanity.

That is truly, honestly, evil.

The only thing positive that we can take away from this fact, other than our memories of Paragon City, is that we do recognize it as evil, and that, recognizing it, we as individuals vow never to act in such ways to other members of the human family, even in small affairs. We will not perpetuate the evil that has been visited upon us. We will do what we can to break the cycle.

Thank you all for being my online family these past six years. In parting, will be on tonight for as long as I can bear to be. And I will say then, as did Frodo in the shadow of Mount Doom,"Now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things . . ."

--Gothica, Guardian blueside

[Lucretia MacEvil]

Wow.  Just... wow.

What I would give to be able to express myself thus.

Thank you, Gothica, for putting into words the nature of our disgust with this whole debacle.

And thank you, citizens of Paragon and the Isles, for being there when I needed you.  I tried to be there for you, too.

See you out there....

---Lucretia
       (Infinity server, alts on both sides)

[Vhailor2003]

This is beautiful, and deserves to be seen and repeated.

[Insatiable One]

wow.  well versed and well read. 

you may have read "A Canticle for Liebowitz" and if you have not, I suggest it.   If so, bear in mind, that we have much more than a scrap of a blueprint to rebuild with.    While it is inherent in our nature to self-destruct, the ruinsof old cities are often the foundations for new ones.

[Colette]

If I may repeat what I said in my letter to Disney... City of Heroes is a work of art. This is like some rich wanker buying a Goya, or an original folio, or a very rare classic comic book, and feeding it to the fire when he's bored of it.

[johnrobey]

Very nicely reasoned, worded, and felt.  It is evil.  It is the destruction of art and community in the pursuit of having more than was previously sufficient.  While I've not read On the Beach your description of it reminds me more of the dangers from global warming and climate change.  While City of Heroes may return--I hope it does--or a successor to it emerge, you are right in calling this out as evil.

I don't consider you over the top or melodramatic in the least.  What you said was beautifully written.