Morality is a touchy subject for me, cherub. I was thrown into the Bastille for what ended up being little more than giving people laxatives. To the middle class courts that condemned me, I was an evil man. A monster, a degenerate, and as a member of one of the oldest families in France, I was to the rising class completely irredeemable.
But when the Bastille was stormed and I had been set free, the men that came said to me that I was a victim for suffering under a corrupt system, and I was rewarded with freedom. Both sides coexisted, but based upon the circumstances of each, the definitions of 'good' and 'evil' came out being completely different.
Conversely, when I served in war, I witnessed a number of men who had been deemed 'good' within their societies do terrible things for the glory of King and Country, even worse things just to stay alive. Many of these man had to return to their families, their mothers and fathers, or their wives and children, and make account only to themselves for the things they had done, because the laws of morality say that evil deeds done in times of crisis, in times of war, are not evil deeds at all.
[He sighed.]
This isn't helping, I imagine. But the point is that, when there is nothing left, when all else is taken away, man must survive by the means nature gifted him. When the crisis is over, if man still stands, and he chooses to return to society, then he must come to terms with what he did on his own, make amends if necessary and if possible, and move on. Because he does no better by himself by resigning himself to guilt.
[A breath.]
My society lauded me as a degenerate, an atheist of the worst kind, a libertine. My commands in times of war were instrumental in the deaths of hundreds of men, however. No one asks questions about that, and no one asked me what it did to me in the end.
Action!
But when the Bastille was stormed and I had been set free, the men that came said to me that I was a victim for suffering under a corrupt system, and I was rewarded with freedom. Both sides coexisted, but based upon the circumstances of each, the definitions of 'good' and 'evil' came out being completely different.
Conversely, when I served in war, I witnessed a number of men who had been deemed 'good' within their societies do terrible things for the glory of King and Country, even worse things just to stay alive. Many of these man had to return to their families, their mothers and fathers, or their wives and children, and make account only to themselves for the things they had done, because the laws of morality say that evil deeds done in times of crisis, in times of war, are not evil deeds at all.
[He sighed.]
This isn't helping, I imagine. But the point is that, when there is nothing left, when all else is taken away, man must survive by the means nature gifted him. When the crisis is over, if man still stands, and he chooses to return to society, then he must come to terms with what he did on his own, make amends if necessary and if possible, and move on. Because he does no better by himself by resigning himself to guilt.
[A breath.]
My society lauded me as a degenerate, an atheist of the worst kind, a libertine. My commands in times of war were instrumental in the deaths of hundreds of men, however. No one asks questions about that, and no one asked me what it did to me in the end.