Redemption
Jul. 7th, 2009 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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theatrical_muse, today.
Prompt 288: Is redemption truly possible?
Sure. Just have your coupon ready when you go through the checkout counter. Make sure you cut off those cereal box tops; collect five and redeem them for fabulous prizes!
Oh? That's not the kind of redemption you mean? Silly me.
To redeem something is to exchange it. Transform useless junk into something valuable. So if you redeem a person, or they redeem themselves, they are symbolically transforming themselves from something worthless to something worthwhile. Which is all very well and good until you ask "worthless to whom? worthwhile to whom?" The answer generally ends up being "society." And why, might I ask, does society get to decide what its members are worth?
You can't *redeem* yourself because you will always be the person who did the things you did. There's no going back. Well, there's no going back unless I decide that you need a lesson in how pointless going back is, but that's besides the point. Beings are not good or evil, valuable or worthless... beings are what they are. What they do is another story, but you can't redeem what you did, because you did it. There's no way to change it (not unless you're fairly adept at time travel and you've determined the change won't cause paradox, and even then, you'll still know you did it, and generally speaking, a timeline will still exist where you did it. You just won't live there anymore.)
Now, do you want to talk about making *up* for what you did? Now we get into the concept of a cosmic balance scale. You did something bad, so now you have to do something good to make it balance. You poisoned your mom's coffee, but then you made shoes for orphans! You exploited people ruthlessly to get rich and then you donated half your money to the poor. You killed a whole lot of people, but it's okay, because now that you're in power you're going to fix all the problems your civilization suffers!
It doesn't work like that. You did what you did, all that you did, and there's no one totalling up your balance sheet at the end. The people you killed are just as significant as the ones you saved. The real question is: what must you do in order to be able to live with what you've done, and what must you do for others so that they will let you live with what you've done?
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG
theatrical_muse, today.Prompt 288: Is redemption truly possible?
Sure. Just have your coupon ready when you go through the checkout counter. Make sure you cut off those cereal box tops; collect five and redeem them for fabulous prizes!
Oh? That's not the kind of redemption you mean? Silly me.
To redeem something is to exchange it. Transform useless junk into something valuable. So if you redeem a person, or they redeem themselves, they are symbolically transforming themselves from something worthless to something worthwhile. Which is all very well and good until you ask "worthless to whom? worthwhile to whom?" The answer generally ends up being "society." And why, might I ask, does society get to decide what its members are worth?
You can't *redeem* yourself because you will always be the person who did the things you did. There's no going back. Well, there's no going back unless I decide that you need a lesson in how pointless going back is, but that's besides the point. Beings are not good or evil, valuable or worthless... beings are what they are. What they do is another story, but you can't redeem what you did, because you did it. There's no way to change it (not unless you're fairly adept at time travel and you've determined the change won't cause paradox, and even then, you'll still know you did it, and generally speaking, a timeline will still exist where you did it. You just won't live there anymore.)
Now, do you want to talk about making *up* for what you did? Now we get into the concept of a cosmic balance scale. You did something bad, so now you have to do something good to make it balance. You poisoned your mom's coffee, but then you made shoes for orphans! You exploited people ruthlessly to get rich and then you donated half your money to the poor. You killed a whole lot of people, but it's okay, because now that you're in power you're going to fix all the problems your civilization suffers!
It doesn't work like that. You did what you did, all that you did, and there's no one totalling up your balance sheet at the end. The people you killed are just as significant as the ones you saved. The real question is: what must you do in order to be able to live with what you've done, and what must you do for others so that they will let you live with what you've done?
Muse: Q
Fandom: Star Trek TNG