Nietzsche states:  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. Source: Beyond Good and Evil  In fiction (and in real life at times) people embrace the inner monsters (sometimes literal, sometimes figurative) to gain the power they need to defeat their foes, get to the next level, or grit through something they'd rather not do. If this is something that seems to work, why are we specifically warned against it? In any war, in any problematic situation where horrible things are happening, it can be impossible (or virtually so) not to use the selfsame tactics of those that oppose you. The saying goes &quot;ALL'S fair in love and war&quot; and even if you'll pay for doing it in the long run by being seen as a monster, by doing these horrible things (or at times even MORE horrible than those that oppose you), you'll have the satisfaction that you won, even though at day's end it was a morally a pyrrhic victory. But if you accomplish what you set out to do, sometimes it's worth it. But such things can't help but drag you through the soil of morality, dirtying you in the process.
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What do you think Nietzsche meant by "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." (Beyond Good and Evil, 146)?  What kind of monster? What does it mean to look into an abyss?
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Lately, in one of my campaigns, I've been having problems with a character who everyone agrees is acting out of alignment. Everyone, that is, but him. The problem, of course, is that he's playing a Monk, and his actions are clearly chaotic in nature. Not just on rare occasions, either, but continuously. Well, I've told him that if he doesn't start acting more lawful, that his alignment will change. He, however, insists that I'm just trying to force him to play the character as I would play it.  How can I justify changing his alignment, without making it seem like I'm trying to control how he plays his character, or just pulling the GM card?  NOTE: I'm not asking for people to agree or disagree with mine or his view on the situation. Regardless of whether or not his actions justify a change of alignment does not matter, I simply want to know how GMs have in the past justified alignment changes, or how people would suggest going about doing so.
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Ok. So I read books as a kid, this may have been mid to late 1980s. Definitely before 1993. These details I remember, they might be from the same book or from several:   Slower than light space travel with severe time dilation. There were boardings of space ships, but the fighting odds could be very uneven because a foe could be from your future or your past, depending on when you started your space journey, because of relativistic time dilation. No faster than light travel, no time travel either. Just regular physics. To fight better in melee, soldiers would have (more or less willingly, I think they knew beforehand) false memories or notions implanted of the enemy as horrible human beings so soldiers could kill them more easily without remorse. Towards the end of the story, veterans of the war are described as not quite feeling at home after the war. One planet (home?) or country is described as inhabited entirely of clones, Adams and Eves, I think homosexual, or that sexuality could be switched deliberately. I think the veterans find at the end a refuge somewhere more like the home they are used to. The reason so much has changed is of course the time dilation. They spent maybe decades in the war, while on the planets centuries or millenia passed. I think one moral (there may be many more I missed as a child) of the story was the futility of war. If I recall correctly, the war was resolved in a way that made the efforts of the veterans seem for nothing.
86006
A while ago a friend told me the plot of a book (or book series, he isn't sure) that he couldn't remember the name of, and I want to find it.  Here's what he told me:   Every person in existence is in hell: Mozart, Hitler, Ghandi, everyone. No one knows why for sure. Hell is a lot like normal modern life, but everything is slightly worse. There is an eye in the sky and everyone thinks it is watching them. Dante is in hell and he's some kind of programmer/IT guy, and he thinks the reason he's here is something offensive in the divine comedy. He keeps trying to rewrite it to fix the problem, but his computer always crashes and erases the file before he can finish. People can't die here; when they do they are taken to some sort of incredibly creepy guy to get stitched back together.  The only exception to this is Hemingway, supposedly because he spent his whole life preparing to die, so now he can't even temporarily discorporate.    I have never run into anyone who recognizes this - I'm told Riverworld is sort of similar but not really? It'd be awesome if this rings a bell for someone, thanks.
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I've heard a lot about the supposed evils about not voting/voting for a 3rd party in recent political discussion here in the States. The reasoning seems to posit that (e.g.) in the Trump/Hillary race, refusing to vote for either party seems to morally support Trump, and voting for a party who is predictably never going to win is seen as just as of an immoral approach (within the context that a community of voters don't want Trump in power). Essentially, although both of these solutions would probably ultimately give Hillary a greater advantage, some voters would declare a failure to actively condemn/act against Trump immoral.  I've heard similar ethical reasoning in social situations. For instance, if a child is being bullied at school, and a bystander does nothing to help him, some might say that the bystander was acting immorally not because an indifference to helping people is bad, but because refusing to do so condones the bully's actions. Take another example from biblical hermeneutical disputes. Some say that the last passages of Colossians 3 condone slavery by remaining silent on the justice of the act.   Here's my question: Where is the line drawn between immoral inactivity and a simple lack of action? It seems to me that if I were to carry such principles to certain extremes, half of my life would all of a sudden become immoral because I would be somehow indirectly supporting some all-permeating kyriarchy, for instance, by not acting explicitly against it.   Additionally, Who are some thinkers who have written on the subject that I might be able to read?
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'Alas! yes,’ said Elrond. 'Isildur took it, as should not have been. It should have been cast then into Orodruin’s fire nigh at hand where it was made. But few marked what Isildur did. He alone stood by his father in that last mortal contest; and by Gil-galad only Círdan stood, and I. But Isildur would not listen to our counsel.      ‘”This I will have as weregild for my father, and my brother,” he said; and therefore whether we would or no, he took it to treasure it. But soon he was betrayed by it to his death; and so it is named in the North Isildur’s Bane. Yet death maybe was better than what else might have befallen him.   Both knew the power of evil and could guess the amount of suffering caused by not destroying the ring. Why didn't they take it from Isildur by force? Even if they had killed him, it would be a small price to pay for saving thousands. It would even be an ethical decision towards Isildur. It was clear that he is getting corrupted in the very moment he decided to keep it (or perhaps even fight to keep it), and it was clear that he would suffer a lot from its influence and die in sorrow and pain - as Elrond himself says "Yet death maybe was better than what else might have befallen him."
10237
The dictionary lists these as antonyms, although the definitions of both don't really oppose each other.  I mean a case where the central figure of a story (and possibly simultaneously the narrator) is a black character, a meddler, evil guy with no redeeming values, who causes all the trouble, while the rest of the "crew", all secondary roles, are the opposition.  The traditional approach equates main character = the good guy = protagonist, and the opponent = "person causing problem" = the antagonist, but what if the protagonist is the one causing the problem?  What do we call the protagonist's opponents then? Or maybe one should cease to call the central character "protagonist"?
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In Marvel Cinematic Universe, military tried to create super soldiers like Hulk, but they failed. So, the program was shut down.  Where did they fail? Didn't Blonsky get Wolverine-type super healing capability? Why couldn't it make the military stronger? Other than this, wasn't Abomination a success (despite the fact that it wasn't an original work of the military)? He was defeated by Hulk, but enemy forces don't have a Hulk. When it comes to anger, who cares as long as you are focused on the target? Abomination was indeed in full control and he was always after Hulk.
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I happen to be this type who always finds it hard to turn down someone who asks for my help.  You know, like when people ask to borrow some money, ask to take them to see a doctor, ask to help with English (I'm a nonnative speaker), ask to teach them some difficult subject, and anything. Moreover, this type of personality will not turn down one's request even if they are in a difficult situation themselves.  I don't think that the word kind or nice or selfless would be suitable for this.  I read  too, but the word altruist is used to describe someone who never asks for help, not for someone who can't say a "no" to someone else who asks them for help (which means that they may frequently ask for others' help too).  Besides, I don't know whether this is a negative or positive personality. So I can't figure out the right word to describe it.  Do I comprehend this in a weird way?
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I can't remember much about it other than something/one unleashed a machine within a giant pit, and then what I assume is either space marines, or regular military had to deal with the issue. It didn't go well obviously. The monsters had arms that were basically spikes and were very fast, and every human slain was dropped into the pit to become a monster via a conveyor belt and saw blades. However the hero overcame the machine after he was put in and won.
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Why didn't the IF want Peter Wiggin?  Ender's Game implies that they didn't want him for being too violent/aggressive (I believe the quote from Graff was something like "doesn't know half the time if he wants to be a human or a jackal").  But this seems to be contradicted by two facts:   They already have specimens like that in school. Bonzo Madrid, for one, is the same except dumber.  Or Bernard, of who Alai said "I'm not Bernard, I never tortured cats for fun.". If you recall, the main signal that Peter was dangerous was his torturing small animals. Less importantly, Peter turned out way non-jackaly. We can write that off on faulty analysis during early years.   I'd prefer answers based on book sources or Card's statements if any are available. Please don't quote Graf's original statement from beginning of Ender's game as an answer - that's what I'm questioning.   IMPORTANT: Any answers that cite Peter as being a possible impediment to Ender should take into account the fact that Peter was rejected before Ender was even authorized to be born.    P.S. Just to clarify - I didn't ask why IF didn't think Peter Wigging was as genius of a commander as Ender. I am asking why he wasn't taken to the School like all the other talented bullies were. They took plenty of other kids who weren't Ender, so why wasn't Peter among them?
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In a , I mentioned the possibility of killing a character and restoring them to life as a possible method of removing conditions from them. On reflection, I have no idea whether this works or not, and I can't find anything in my books to prove or disprove it.  Are some or all conditions removed when a character dies? If the answer is some, which ones?
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The problem I've always had with evolution is the actual lack of variation between animals. More specifically, the lack of observable gradual change between species.  Take for example the hammerhead shark. It obviously has a strong connection with a normal shark, but where's the "half-hammerhead" shark? Where's the species that only has a SLIGHTLY wider head?  I really doubt that a single mutation on a normal shark resulted in a head shaped like that, it had to happen gradually. Right? As far as I understand, evolution works by random mutation in a child being somehow slightly beneficial to that animal so it get's to live longer and reproduce more, eventually resulting in it's genetic material in dominating the inferior ones before it. But if it was for whatever reason beneficial to have a slightly wider head, why don't all the sharks have slightly wider heads now? On the other hand, if it wasn't beneficial, how come the hammerhead still exists?  Furthermore, I feel like some characteristics of a certain animal can't really have gradual benefits. There's a lizard that shoots blood out of it's eyes. The original ancestor certainly didn't, and I'm sure that if it's child only bled slightly from it's eyes it wouldn't really help if much in life. So for it to actually become beneficial, it seems to me that there had to be a ton of lizards that had a disadvantage of bleeding slightly. In fact, there had to be so many that they evolved even further in the same direction and kept doing that until they bled so much it's an actual benefit (sorry for this turning so gross). So why did the inbetweeners survive long enough to evolve even more, and why did they THEN die out?
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On MM 103, the following characteristic can be found:     Solitary Shapeshifters. At some point in their long lives, metallic   dragons gain the magical ability to assume the forms of humanoids and   beasts...   The text seems really ambiguous, and there are a few things I'd like to understand about it:   How does one determine the stats of its alternate form? Can it have more than one alternative form? How long does the transformation take? Can it do this in combat? Can chromatic dragons do this as well?   In the interest of not making this look like distinctly different questions, I want this to be interpreted as more of a "How does this work?" question, and I'd appreciate any resource with further details on the matter.
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I hear it all the time in arguments over subjective judgements:      There's no accounting for taste.   Where does this saying come from? Is it a quote or old proverb?
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Today, the New York Times online edition  The review contains the following sentence:     The filmmakers don’t villainize anyone, though a few participants come awfully close to twirling waxed mustaches, like an American manager who jokes to a Chinese colleague that it would be a good idea to duct-tape the mouths of talky American workers.   It's clearly nothing positive, but I have never heard of it, cannot deduce the exact meaning from context and could not find anything online, partly because most hits concern physical mustaches.
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This saying/blessing seems to me just as applicable for someone allied with the Dark Force as a Light Force ally as the statement appears to be Force-neutral. By Dark Force user, I mean it (or similar words) being said in the business of Dark Force-leaning activity, not someone who may have said it as a Light Force user and then went to the Dark Side (and never said afterwards).   Either Canon or Legends examples are acceptable.