This one absolutely takes the cake.
Feb. 6th, 2008 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qcontinuumOOC: Reposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse from 6/3/2004.
What is good and what is evil?
Mu.
No, I'm serious, this is a total non-question. Rather like asking "what is blorg?" What *is* blorg, whose frame of reference are you talking about, and besides, who cares?
The group of Earth humans who came from the islands of Japan and studied the philosophy of Zen came up with a great answer for incredibly stupid questions like this. "Mu". It means "your question is too stupid to be answerable." Applied frequently as the answer to such zingers as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" and "If a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound?", mu about sums up my response to this question.
Let us move on to a question that makes sense, shall we?
Who is your personal role model?
There was a time in my existence when the answer I'd have had for that one would have been mu as well. But I actually do have an answer now.
By the standards of my favorite linear timeline it was 300 years ago that we locked up Q in a comet for insisting on the right to die (and, not incidentally, accidentally causing considerable havoc in his experiments into transposing mortality onto the Q state. I mean, I'm all for havoc, but not *accidental* havoc.) He believed-- wrongly, in my opinion-- that the Continuum would inevitably stagnate until we embraced the concept of death, and that some of us would need to die, and that all of us would need to accept the idea of dying someday, before the Continuum could be revitalized. I continue to think he was full of it. I mean, I *have* been bored enough to contemplate killing myself, but if you're omnipotent there have to be other answers out there. You just have to find them.
So we locked him up in this comet to protect him from himself, and the universe of mortals from him as well, and then my old pal Kathy accidentally let him out, and ended up finagling a position for herself as the judge on the tribunal as to whether or not he should be allowed to die. And she ruled in his favor, and he killed himself.
When the Continuum didn't like what I was doing, they took away my powers, let me think it'd be for the rest of my now vastly shortened existence, and then after giving them back terrorized me with the threat of doing it again every time I tried to stand up to them. When we locked Q in a comet because we didn't like what he was doing, he didn't back down. He continued to believe his beliefs even in prison, he refused to cooperate with offers of parole, he wouldn't compromise his ideals for his personal comfort, and in the end, he won. He defeated us all, and convinced at least me that there *are* things worth dying for.
I still don't agree with his beliefs. But he was willing to die for them, to endure boredom and suffering and imprisonment for them, to lose his powers for them. We couldn't cow him into toeing the line, we couldn't make him give up his challenge to the status quo. His example inspired me to fight the stagnation that had consumed the Continuum, even when the forces of order came up with guns that could kill us, even when the whole mess exploded into war.
So my role model was Q. Or Quinn, if you must use his mortal name to differentiate him from me (I understand mortals have a problem with that.)
theatrical_muse from 6/3/2004.What is good and what is evil?
Mu.
No, I'm serious, this is a total non-question. Rather like asking "what is blorg?" What *is* blorg, whose frame of reference are you talking about, and besides, who cares?
The group of Earth humans who came from the islands of Japan and studied the philosophy of Zen came up with a great answer for incredibly stupid questions like this. "Mu". It means "your question is too stupid to be answerable." Applied frequently as the answer to such zingers as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" and "If a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound?", mu about sums up my response to this question.
Let us move on to a question that makes sense, shall we?
Who is your personal role model?
There was a time in my existence when the answer I'd have had for that one would have been mu as well. But I actually do have an answer now.
By the standards of my favorite linear timeline it was 300 years ago that we locked up Q in a comet for insisting on the right to die (and, not incidentally, accidentally causing considerable havoc in his experiments into transposing mortality onto the Q state. I mean, I'm all for havoc, but not *accidental* havoc.) He believed-- wrongly, in my opinion-- that the Continuum would inevitably stagnate until we embraced the concept of death, and that some of us would need to die, and that all of us would need to accept the idea of dying someday, before the Continuum could be revitalized. I continue to think he was full of it. I mean, I *have* been bored enough to contemplate killing myself, but if you're omnipotent there have to be other answers out there. You just have to find them.
So we locked him up in this comet to protect him from himself, and the universe of mortals from him as well, and then my old pal Kathy accidentally let him out, and ended up finagling a position for herself as the judge on the tribunal as to whether or not he should be allowed to die. And she ruled in his favor, and he killed himself.
When the Continuum didn't like what I was doing, they took away my powers, let me think it'd be for the rest of my now vastly shortened existence, and then after giving them back terrorized me with the threat of doing it again every time I tried to stand up to them. When we locked Q in a comet because we didn't like what he was doing, he didn't back down. He continued to believe his beliefs even in prison, he refused to cooperate with offers of parole, he wouldn't compromise his ideals for his personal comfort, and in the end, he won. He defeated us all, and convinced at least me that there *are* things worth dying for.
I still don't agree with his beliefs. But he was willing to die for them, to endure boredom and suffering and imprisonment for them, to lose his powers for them. We couldn't cow him into toeing the line, we couldn't make him give up his challenge to the status quo. His example inspired me to fight the stagnation that had consumed the Continuum, even when the forces of order came up with guns that could kill us, even when the whole mess exploded into war.
So my role model was Q. Or Quinn, if you must use his mortal name to differentiate him from me (I understand mortals have a problem with that.)