Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-93.42.16.80-20151001203157/@comment-1672596-20151007144710

Paranoid Donkey wrote: Weedle McHairybug wrote: Immorality is the May 1968 stuff and the Hippie Movements' Free Love. Immorality would be taking joy in seeing people die or killing people for the sake of it. Immorality would be trying to tell a confused kid that reality never even existed and you should form your own moral code. Immorality would be promoting abortion as well. Immorality would be unleashing a bioweapon on the entire world for a eugenics experiment. Oh my god I'm laughing so hard that I don't even know where to start with this. It's stuff like this Weedle that completely limit your capacity to have robust debates and arguments about morality, specifically about the Metal Gear universe but it's evident that it extends far, far beyond that.

How do you not understand that there are people that do have different moral codes? How do you not understand that one moral choice is not always applicable in every situation - that our very world, that right and wrong have shades of grey? Not only this, but your continual ability to conflate moral relativism and nihilism simply astound me. Truly.

Weedle McHairybug wrote: I dislike moral ambiguity and relativism Yes, don't worry, that much is abundantly clear.

How can you honestly say that Big Boss abducting children from warzones and training them in combat and weaponry aren't child soldiers PURELY because they didn't attack Solid Snake? What is that reasoning? I know you wouldn't make a game where the children don't do that, irrespective of "international standards" or everything else, but you need to understand that your way of portraying or explaining a concept, behaviour or personality simply is NOT the only way it can be done. It's like you deliberately shirk subtlety and subtext purely because they're not as clear cut as is convenient for you. I can only imagine how the Friedrich Nietzsche quote from Mission 46 in TPP would have made you totally enraged.

Don't worry, if you reply to this I won't respond to it. I simply don't have the energy to contest this with you. To address your first point, actually, there isn't moral relativism. God made very clear there is only ONE morality in the scriptures: His morality, the ones he laid down in various laws and codes. If moral relativism truly did exist, there wouldn't even BE a Ten Commandments, there wouldn't be a Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers.

And for your second point, when you are anticipating that Solid Snake is going to be putting a stop to your plans, and you are going out of your way to try and stop him before he stops you, you use everything you've got, and yes, that WOULD naturally include child soldiers. That's actually how most militaries operate when dealing with something they know full well are a grave threat to their plans.

And I'm not a big fan of Nietzsche precisely because he promoted amorality. In fact, his ideas of morality are what led to the Nazis and even the Khmer Rouge's heinous actions. Not to mention we've got characters like Kefka Palazzo or the Joker who perfectly reflect Nietzsche's train of thought (In fact, the latter character even has an entire blog entry explaining how he relates to Nietzsche, citing elements from both The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight).