Exalted games reflect human horror?

[Obsidian Soul]

Do you'll think that an Exalted game can truly reflect the horror of humanity?  The fact that the worst enemy of humanity is not nature or supernatural creatures but humanity itself.  The reason I'm asking is I'm doing a paper on totalitarian language and, since it is the best example of a totalitarian state, I've been having to read about the Nazis and everything they did for the last two months.  Its starting to truly test my faith in humanity.

 

[Flagg]

Do you'll think that an Exalted game can truly reflect the horror of humanity?

I didn't realize that this was it's purpose.

Its starting to truly test my faith in humanity.

Good. Abandon that faith as soon as you can manage. It's misplaced.


-S

 

[Jakk Bey]

The Nazis are, sadly, not the worst that we've produced.  


They were perhaps some of the most up front and public about it, but look at East Timor, look at Africa, look at what Europeans did during the Crusades. The Chinese. The Turks. The Greeks. The Hebrews--that's right, the Jews weren't always victims, but damn aggressive bastiches in the past--the Russians. The many regimes in South America.  The Aztecs. Americans towards our native population. South Pacific islands are rife with tales of cannibalism.


What each of these tales of horror include, is turning others into things, turning off our recognition of these others as people, as fellow human beings, but something foreign and different. Intrinsically different.  


What you find in most folks, is that in order to be good at violence, you either have to distance yourself physically--doing horrible things at a distance, and with others' hands--or you have to distance yourself mentally--turning people into targets.  You can still keep them as people in your mind, if you have a strong reason--vengence is a grand one--but you have to have those reasons full in your mind, and be able to transform people into that grouping, and in that act, you transform them into something still that is apart from you.


While sociopaths are horrible, they are at least understandable, in that they don't make the connection that people are like them at all.  Real scary to me are the folks who enjoy the terror from others, because they recognize that as being just like themselves--those bastiches are the real monsters.  Psychotics diverge and their disconnect with reality gives them a great deal of flexibility in their actions, and a wide range of options, far wider than most folks, which is why they are so damn scary.


When people make the leap to dissassociate other folks as being like themselves, they set the stage to be able to justify doing horrible things.  These folks aren't like us, so it's OK.  Those people are different, look at their skin/dress/ religion/nation/culture, and they deserve what they get.[/i]


The thing is, most folks have an aversion to hurting folks directly.  Not all, and it can be trained down, but to commit real violence against another human being takes a fair amount of coaxing. Not just from consequences, but to be honest, most folks need a fair amount of reason to be able to swing away, because humans aren't all that naturally good at killing each other.  We can be. We are flexible in that, but in order to do so, we need either to be really pissed off at a group or person, or disconnect entirely that they are even like us.  Either way helps short circuit the natural inhibitions we have from hurting each other.  


Watch folks after their first real fight, the kind where injury and death are a likely result--not just a few bruises, but a real conflict.  There is most often barfing as a result, even if they win.  We are NOT all that good at just rolling up a putting a beat down on people--we usually need a bit more than just someone pointing at someone and saying "He's got to go." It requires a bit of training, a disconnect, a distancing.  You recognize that other as people, and real, and most folks get too heebied out.


Which is why you have to distance people away from thinking about those people as people, but things that are different.  Things. Targets. Rat bastards who deserver what they get.  Monsters. Villains. Marauders. Different.


Mind you, this is in regards to having been raised by a DI and HTH Instructor, and as a bouncer.  Watched far too many young men over the years puke their guts out the first time they felt a bone break in their hands, even by accident.


What is startling, is that we have this capacity to 'embiggen' our hearts to others, to draw folks into a larger sense of community, and at the same time, we have the capcity to narrow our focus of community down so much that we can reduce others to mere things.  It can slide both ways.


Faith in humanity is touchy.  We have a vast capacity for kindness, for embracing each other as brother, for compassion, but compassion comes with recognizing others as being equal to us, as being just the same.  It is one of our great strengths, but at the same time, this same herd/troop tendency also has the flip side, that allows us to reduce others to an outsider status, that gives us the courage to consider them rivals, as targets, as 'other'.  Once that's done, we have a cold capacity to murder and reduce what we see as a threat to those in our herd/troop/nation/community.


It's part of the same instinct.  To protect the community.  The key is try to enlarge that idea of community, to reduce the number of critters and folks we see as 'outsiders.' It's in getting to understand this tendency, that you can reaffirm your faith in humanity. And recogize when the troop instinct gets a little wacky.  When folks surrender to it, and when they can use to enlarge their groupings, or reduce them.


If you want to convey this instinct, you have to recognize how folks reduce others to things, to outsiders. To reduce the number of connections so that we don't regard them as people.  


Or if you really want true horror, that there are sick bastards out there who just are off enough to revel in harming our own grouping--which is anathema to our pack loving nature.  Those rogues are seen as being really fucked in the head.

 

[Guest]

I feel that most of the world population is below my contempt