The Metal Clan and Utopianism

A couple weeks back, I ended my post on Zaheer and Zen Anarchism (that sounds so fun to write) with a promise that the next time I wrote about The Legend of Korra, I'd talk about the Metal Clan. That day has come, and I now plan onc talking about how the Metal Clan relates to the philosophy of Utopianism.

Utopiansim refers to the belief or philosophy surrounding the concept of utopia. Utopia itself is defined by merriam-webster.com as "an imaginary place in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect." Christian philosopher and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig defines Utopiansim as "arrival at... a kind of perfect world, a paradise on earth, as it were—the perfect society." Although this precise term wasn't coined until English philosopher Thomas More wrote the book Utopia in 1516, the idea of utopia has been around since Plato's Republic at least, which dates back to around 380 B.C. Utopia has been discussed in various other literature and other media across the centuries, and in the modern era has led to the development of the respected but relatively new genre of dystopia. The Legend of Korra provides in Book 3: Change an example of what is for all practical purposes a utopian society: Zaofu, home of the Metal Clan.

Zaofu is a community made up largely of metal and earth-benders, founded and led by some of the descendants of Toph. According to its leader, Suyin Beifong, it is a place where everyone is encouraged to strive for their maximum potential. She also states that it is "the safest city in the world." Indeed it is, as it contains elaborate security measures, such as retractable metal roofs over the city, metal-bending powered gondolas for entry, and a crack squad of metal-bending police, though Lin Beifong doesn't think much of all this. What's more, it's implied that all or many of the city's earth-bending inhabitants have learned Toph's ability to detect lies in other people through earth-bending, providing a neat incentive for the residents of Zaofu to never fib. Zaofu is evidently a meritocracy, housing some of the world's finest scientific minds, including a certain Howard Hughes-esque businessman who we haven't seen since the Book 2 finale. Thus, for all intents and purposes, Zaofu is a utopia, most likely following the philosophy of classical liberalism (not to be confused with liberal progressivism), perhaps not intentionally established, and not stated outright by the characters, but definitely meeting much of the criteria.

But here's the catch: Utopia, by its very definition, is imaginary, just like Zaofu is imaginary. But unlike many imagined utopias, Zaofu's status as an ideal society is subtly deconstructed by pointing out one of the principle holes in the proposal of utopia: Who's going to make it all happen?

Many utopias, especially those based on the principles of socialism, profess that given the proper conditions, a classless, stateless society will emerge in which everyone works for the common good. Of course, this has never happened in reality, with attempted experiments with such models resulting in oppressive dictatorships such as Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Revolutionary France, and countless other nasty historical episodes. The main problem with this idea is that human nature is, by default, self-serving and uncharitable. The only way to organize a group of such creatures to work for the common good is through coercion, such as in a dictatorship or an oligarchy. But if that happens, then the ideal of a classless, stateless society is lost, and the whole experiment is for nothing. Due to their inherently faulty natures, the economies produced by socialism and its ilk generally descend into kleptocracy, or in a few extreme cases, anarchy. In many cases across the modern developing world, multiple dictatorships have risen and fallen in succession, calling to mind the French proverb, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." As Lois H. Sargent wrote in her essay "Anyone for Utopia?" in 1977, "Utopians seem never to give thought to the mechanics of management and operation of their imagined systems."

Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.)

Part of the reason societies like the Soviet Union developed into dictatorships was because the dictators in question typically don't want to relinquish their power. (The rest of the reason for these particular events have to do with a discussion of Communism, which is beyond the scope of this post.) Rare in history is the benign ruler who, when given absolute power in a time of crisis, resists the temptation to take hold of it until someone else can take it back by force. The Roman statesman Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.) comes to mind, as does George Washington, who refused the opportunity to become King George I of America after the American War of Independence. In the Soviet Union, people like Lenin and Stalin, despite their ostensibly sincere belief in the Communist Utopia, were evil tyrants who used their power to bring about many deaths, if for Lenin it was thousands and Stalin millions. Later Soviet dictators weren't much better, using their power to line the pockets of they and their friends while the people lived in squalor. 

It is this element of corruption which all dictatorships and oligarchs have in common that exposes a chief vulnerability of any kind of utopia. In The Legend of Korra, a principle leader of Zaofu is revealed to have been in league with the villains. The reason this is significant is because it shows that Utopia can't be accomplished as long as there are imperfect humans trying to make things perfect. All civilizations have rulers, and if a ruler is corrupt, the whole civilization will be corrupt along with him. As we have seen, corruption is often the case in dictatorships. Imagine if the aforementioned Zaofu leader had used his position to accumulate illicit wealth, curry favors, accept bribes, or pervert justice for his own ends, which nearly does happen? What would we make of this Utopian community then?

The other big problem with Utopianism, an extension of the problem outlined above, has to do with the nature of government. Government is designed to restrain the corrupted nature of man, as the founders of the United States set out to do, with successful results. The American experiment is unique in that it went about this task by restraining the government; that is, by setting in place certain safeguards, such as separation of powers and elected representatives, so that the government would not grow too big or oppressive. The founders had no illusions, however, that they could produce a perfect society. James Madison, widely known as "the Father of the Constitution," wrote in The Federalist #51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The long and short of it is that there will always be iniquities in any society made up of imperfect men. Even the nation of Israel, whose law codes (forming the first five books of the Bible) were provided by God Himself, and was supposed to be a model for the rest of the world, was a less than perfect society, frequently veering into apostasy, war, civil unrest, and other blights, to the point of being split into two separate kingdoms after the death of Solomon. (See 1 Kings 12)

Oddly enough, Israel in the days of the judges was little more than a loosely federated coalition of tribes led by a council of elders, and yet things were usually just as chaotic then as they were during the period of the kings, if not more so. (See Judges.) Thus, not even a semi-democratic theocracy such at this could bring about Utopia, not by a long shot! If all of this tells us anything, it's that there is no hope of a truly perfect society, not one made by human hands, until the coming of the Lord in His power, when there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth. Imperfect man can never make anything truly perfect, permanent, or stable. This world is, after all, transient and temporary.

In sum, we see from The Legend of Korra than even a society as wonderful and idyllic as that of the Metal Clan is not invulnerable to fault. For all its veneer of Utopia, it is still shown to be fallible in some key respects. It brings to mind another location from Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra's predecessor. This location, the city of Ba Sing Se, is a dystopia controlled by the villainous Grand Secretariat Long Feng, who through the use of the Dai Li, the sinister secret police, claims to be maintaining "an orderly utopia. The last one on Earth." Unfortunately, poor Long Feng is just as deluded as Marx, Wells, and Lenin. The only Utopia to ever exist will come at a time when all of them have faded away, and this one will never fade away: The kingdom of Christ, the Son of the Living God. And unlike any human made utopia, its coming is inevitable and everlasting.

Follow Levi on Twitter at @levi_sweeney, and submit questions and post ideas with the hashtag #QLevi

Image 1 courtesy tv.com. Image 2 courtesy kids.britannica.com.

The Legend of Korra - Book 3: Change: Zaheer and Moral Syncretism

I'm not gonna lie, Book 3 of The Legend of Korra is easily the best season of the show that I've seen yet. I haven't seen Book 4, however, so I'll have to wait until then to judge whether or not this is in fact the best season yet. A word of warning though: Due to the nature of the post's content, some substantial spoilers regarding Zaheer's motivations will be mentioned.

The Legend of Korra - Book 3: Change is everything that this sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender was hyped to be from the start: bigger, better, and more beautiful than we've seen yet. Taking place a couple weeks after the events of the sadly mediocre Book 2: Spirits, we see that Harmonic Convergence (long story) left dozens of random non-benders across the world -including Tenzin's brother Bumi- with the ability to airbend. This prompts Korra, Mako, Bolin, Tenzin, Asami, Bumi, and Jinora to embark on a quest to gather the new airbenders and rebuild the Air Nomads from the ground up. Unbeknownst to them, however, a mysterious warrior poet named Zaheer (voiced by Henry Rollins) has broken out of prison under the watch of the strangely incompetent White Lotus, with airbending abilities of his own. He pulls together his own team of elite benders to strike at Team Avatar for enigmatic purposes. Will Korra and company succeed in their quest before Zaheer achieves his mysterious plan? (Good grief, I'm beginning to sound like Shiro Shinobi.)

Aside from the intense emotion, high drama, funny dialogue, stunning visuals, great voice acting, and cool action that is by now par for the course on this show, Book 3 boasts what is quite easily the best villain we've seen yet. Unalaq and Vaatu were just two more generic evil bad guys at the end of the day, and Amon, while getting an awesome build-up, was the victim of a lousy payoff. It didn't help that he and Tarrlok went out kind of stupidly, and don't even get me started on Hiroshi Saito. Zaheer though, Zaheer is a whole different animal. Zaheer is quite easily one of the best TV villains I've seen yet, and the best I've ever seen in an animated series. I'd even say that he's one of the best villains we've seen in the entire Avatar-franchise, up there with Azula, Long Feng, and Ozai. What makes Zaheer such a great villain? Simple: He has the most complex, well-developed, interesting, and well-executed motivation we've ever seen on this entire show, and in my book is tied with Zuko for that category in the entire franchise.

But what is that motivation, and why is it so important to Zaheer's character?

As any seasoned writer who might be reading this blog would know, in a story, character motivation is everything. Without a motivation, a character is just a random blip on the screen with no purpose and no place in the story. They're just there, doing nothing, affecting nothing, and that makes for a pretty boring story. Believe it or not, making up a character motivation is a lot harder than it sounds if you're a writer. I can't begin to tell you of the ribbings I endured in an old creative writing class I took a few years ago that stemmed from my characters having terrible, poorly thought out motivations. Simply put, the better motivation a character has, the better odds he (or she!) has of being a great character. And remember what Zaheer has?

That's the thing about Zaheer though: His motivation is so complex and mysterious that even Korra and the rest of Team Avatar doesn't know what's driving him and his pals until about halfway through the season, and even then it blows their minds even more than it does the audience's. The long and short of it is that the guiding philosophy of Zaheer's group is that the natural order of the world is, in fact, disorder, and that they are on a righteous mission to topple all the world's governments and throw the world into anarchy. Throw in a smattering of humanism, and you've got what amounts to Zen Anarchism, which is probably the most bizarre philosophical label I've ever seen, discussed, or otherwise conceived of.

It's also inherently unworkable.

I don't know exactly what the show's illustrious creators (Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko) were trying to do when they introduced Zaheer, but Zen Anarchism as a practical philosophy is fundamentally irreconcilable with its very self. Zen, insofar as I understand it, is the attainment of wisdom through meditation, which in Eastern philosophical thought is basically thinking really, really hard. Anarchism, on the other hand, advocates for a stateless society where no government exists, based on the premise that any kind of governance only leads to more suffering, which is right where Zaheer stands. But the entities that cherish the obtaining of knowledge and wisdom, such as institutions of higher learning and many religious bodies, are historically shown to be byproducts of an established society in which there exists some sort of governing authority. The environment of peace and safety required to pursue a Zen-like lifestyle is unattainable in an environment of anarchy. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." 


If men were angels. The key problem with with Zaheer's outlook is that he's got all backwards. Men aren't angels because of bad governments; certain governments are bad because men aren't angels. One particularly memorable scene from episode 3 of Book 3: Change ("The Earth Queen") features Team Avatar arriving at Ba Sing Se. In an obvious parallel to a similar scene in Book 2: Earth of Airbender, they come into the city, only to find that it's a old, broken down cesspit of poverty and pestilence, ruled over by a despotic dragon-lady of a monarch who bleeds the people of their tax-money and then leaves them to rot. The message: Things haven't changed at all. If anything, they've gotten worse. In universe, the Ba Sing Se of 75-plus years prior was, in Troper parlance, a Crapsaccharine World. At least there was a semblance of order, and things were relatively safe and peaceful. Now, it's a full-on kleptocracy, where the kingdom and its citizens are the chattels of the Earth Queen. 

Does this mean that all government is inherently bad? Not quite. While any human effort to erect a lasting authority based on its own principles, borrowed or invented, is doomed to fail, almost any government is worse than no government. An every-man-for-himself mentality, where the rule of law is defined by who carries the biggest stick, is unquestionably a chaotic nightmare that only a shortsighted fool would really want. Look no further than Somalia. Is Zaheer such a shortsighted fool? He's no dummy, but I think we'll have to wait until Book 4 to find out the real answer to that question, owing to the inevitable consequences of the back half of Book 3: Change.

In short, man was never meant to live apart from his neighbor, a situation which Anarchism cannot resolve. You can talk all you want about mutual cooperation without government, but again, men are not angels. A mirror of the ultimate authority is needed if the ends of God are to be met, that is, if mercy, justice, peace, love, and gentleness are to be the ruling attributes of a society. The common refrain in the book of Judges was, "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Scary, huh? In the book of Romans, Paul wrote, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." Jesus Christ himself said in the book of Luke, concerning taxes, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Zaheer may think he knows what's best for the world, but Korra and company would be happy to know that he's wrong, rightfully rejecting Zaheer's worldview.

In sum, Zaheer has great appeal as a villain. He's smart, cunning, cool, has a complex and compelling motivation, and feels like a flesh-and-blood person. He's not a megalomaniac like Ozai, nor is he a destructive tyrant like Unalaq. He has a lot more in common with Amon than anyone else, even though they fall on two opposite extremes of the ideological spectrum. He even has a girlfriend, for Pete's sake! (Incidentally, I think that "The Earth Queen" features the franchise's first onscreen lip-lock between two consenting adults.) I love how he quotes poetry and airbends like a boss, because he's just that awesome. It helps that he has some real badbutt friends. His "philosophical mumbo-jumbo," as Korra put it, may be unsound, but he's nonetheless a very charismatic villain.

Next time, we'll be talking about another interesting faucet of The Legend of Korra: The Metal Clan.

Images courtesy of avatar.wikia.com

Firefly: The 'Verse According to Mal

I was first introduced to Firefly in 2011 while researching for a paper on the comparative merits of science fiction and fantasy. In hindsight, I believe that this particular subject was too subjective to warrant serious debate in an academic paper, amount to little more than an opinion piece followed by a comparison of box office numbers and accolades. However, researching for this paper allowed my dear friend Nathan (a different Nathan; not the one who believes that the 1978 Superman film is the greatest superhero film ever made, and yes Nate, I will never stop bugging you about that, old pal) to help me start watching Firefly. I remember liking the show then, and I recently re-watched the whole series on a whim, and I was blown away by how good it actually was to my older eyes. A combination of witty dialogue, fun action, engaging stories, excellent acting and production design, and a ingeniously creative plot made for what could potentially have been the greatest sci-fi TV show ever made.

For those who don't know, Firefly was a short-lived television series created by Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and The Avengers. Firefly fell into the sort of unique genre-splicing category that Whedon is known for, being best described as space western. You have a nine guys and gals flying through space in a ship called Serenity in the years following a galactic civil war. Serenity is captained by Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a veteran of the losing side of the war, the Independents. The winner of that war, the Alliance, is depicted as a callous, draconian regime which Mal states is intent on everyone being "interfered with or ignored equally." After re-watching these 14 episodes in preparation for finally watching the big-screen sequel Serentiy, I came to conclude that Malcolm Reynolds is probably best described as a libertarian.

Don't ask me what Whedon's personal political views are, but I believe that this series is probably the most balanced and compelling portrayal of a political viewpoint which I remotely agree with. Mal cherishes what freedom and livelihood is left for him and his compatriots as smugglers, prowling the edges of "civilized" space looking for work, legal or illegal. He and his crew know that their business is a dangerous one, but Mal firmly wants to avoid being caught up in the society of the government he loathes, be it "make-work" jobs provided by the Alliance or even a semblance of legitimacy under the same oppressive system. In other words, he's a disaffected man of principle who doesn't like to admit that he still has principles.

And he truly is disaffected; before the end of the war, Mal was a religious man who fought for his comrades and his cause, ready to charge into battle at a moment's notice. When we see him in the series in the present day, he has no love for God, having an awkward, sometimes tense relationship with Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), a preacher who finds himself traveling aboard Serenity. On the surface, Mal hasn't changed much since before and after the war, still being generally affable and honest, aside from the occasional illegal activity that he and his crew engage in. But underneath, he's plainly much more cynical and dour than he was before, and remains that way throughout the series. I haven't seen Serenity (the movie) yet, but I understand that this might change a little. And there's still all the Serenity comics that I have to read...

The main point, however, is that in a fictional world plainly meant to resemble post-Civil War America, Mal is a clear analogue to the Confederate soldier who honestly believed that he was fighting for a just cause when he signed up for the Confederate army, and then wondering why their just cause hadn't won the day. Unfortunately, that's where the similarities end. The Union is not the Alliance, and the Alliance is not the Union. There's no Lincoln here, no Robert E. Lee, no Grant, no Jefferson Davis. As much of a parallel it's meant to be, the context simply doesn't allow for any great analogy between the two situation than on a primarily superficial level.

Insofar as I know, there hasn't been much detail given about the exact nature of the Independents' idea of good government, if any, so it's obviously difficult to give a fair evaluation between the broad swathes of a despotic federated entity and a libertarian resistance movement. If what I've heard about the Alliance from other sources is anything to go by, however, I think that it's more than fair to say that they're obviously really bad guys. Until I watch Serenity and read the comics, I confess that I might not be able to produce as well-rounded an analysis on this subject as I could, but I believe that at the moment, I'm pretty sure this will do. Besides, when I finally do watch Serenity, I'll have someone else to write about: Shepherd Book.

Fun Fact: Alen Tudyk, who played Wash in Firefly, also voiced Mickey in Halo 3: ODST and Krei is Big Hero 6. Tudyk wasn't the only Firefly actor to voice a character in ODST. Nathan Fillion voiced Buck, and Adam Baldwin, who played Jayne in Firefly, voiced Dutch.

Image courtesy of moviepilot.com

True Villains: A Case Study in Moral Nihilism

Imagine a world where evil wins.

Picture it. The heroes are defeated. The bad guys are triumphant, making wisecracks and pumping fists. Their heinous deeds are splashed across the canvas of your imagination, brought to fruition and on display for all to see. And those wicked sots are actually proud of their actions, feeling justified by them. But there's more: In this scenario, evil deserved to win. In fact, the bad guys are actually the good guys, and the people you thought were the good guys aren't actually all that good. In fact, they're humorless, self-righteous prigs at best, and oafish bullies at worst. What kind of world is this? It's nothing short of a nightmare. 

But it is, in a perversely profound way, right on the mark about what things would really be like without reality's single defining factor: God. 

I've talked a little about my faith on this blog before, but it's mostly been something of sideshow. I'd throw in a Bible verse on the weekends, fill in the people who actually read this thing on the sermons at my church, maybe name drop Big G on occasion, generally in a humorous manner. But now I'd like to talk about something serious. Ironically enough, the spark of this serious discussion comes from a frankly silly and ostensibly lighthearted source: a webcomic called True Villains.

My good buddy Nathan (the other Nathan; not the one who thinks that the Richard Donner Superman movie is the greatest superhero movie ever made) recommended this webcomic to me as a possible source of inspiration, and for a good laugh, in writing my own webcomic. In fact, both my own webcomic (Currently in the works. More on that in the future!) and True Villains have a similar premise; a satirical take on the conventions of genre fiction from the vantage point of the bad guys. To be specific, True Villains takes the standard tropes of your average fantasy world (like, "the good guys always win" and "crime never pays" and "bad guys don't wear yellow."), and turns them inside out and flips them upside down. 

To be honest, this webcomic is fun stuff, with a style of humor that zigzags from raunchy to ridiculous, though never to the extreme of either. In addition to being funny, the characters are admittedly likable. You've got adventurer-turned-apprentice-to-the-evil-bad-guy Sebastian Jalek, Elia the Necromancer, Mia the magical child, Bayn the kid sorcerer, and Xanith the aforementioned evil bad guy. I swear, the makers of this strip could make a truckload of cash on T-shirts of Xanith saying, "I have a plan," or Mia smiling.

But remember what I said earlier, about imagining a world where evil wins? That's pretty much what this strip is, complete with the heroes who aren't heroes. I don't want to sound like some kind of killjoy, but the tail end of Saga 5 made me feel a lump in the pit of my stomach. In it, Sebastian tells his old adventuring buddies, including his sister, to basically shove it, complete with his own explanation of how he sees morality. For the sake of brevity, I will not include the full outpouring of bullcrap that spewed forth from the character's mouth (even Xanith, who's a flipping demon, agrees with me), but I will summarize it. In the scene, Sebastian essentially says that good and evil are two equally valid choices, and that morality is defined by the whim of the chooser. He isn't nearly that honest, wrapping his perversely self-justified twaddle in doublespeak, equating his lack of a definite moral compass with "freedom." 

Freedom. Freedom to do what? Freedom to do whatever Xanith, a sadistic liar, tells him? Freedom to kill and destroy whenever it's convenient? Freedom to aid a psychopathic murderer like Elia in various acts of wholesale slaughter? Near the beginning of the strip, Xanith orders the pair to burn down a whole village for a laugh, with Elia melting the faces off of the survivors. Sebastian admittedly saves Mia from the catastrophe, but only based on an arbitrary notion of morality that he readily discards at will, such as in a recent strip when he's assigned to kill a child said to be "the Chosen One." What kind of freedom is that?

Sebastian goes even further, claiming that it's pointless to fight for good, because there will always be evil. Here's where he turns from moral relativism to outright nihilism. Nihilism is the belief that nothingness defines reality, that life is simply futile. Sebastian has embraced nihilism, declaring that he is glad to be on the side of evil, because it makes him feel "free." He sees himself as above good and evil, doing thing not because he should, but because he can. In other words, he believes that he can do whatever he wants with no consequences. 

Of course, in the world of True Villains, it's vaguely possible for Sebastian to have a point, if only because in that world, there is no "God" as we understand it. There are said to be many "gods," such as a god of progress, a god of stability, a god of fear, a god of tall grass, etc. In fact, there is said to be a "god" for every aspect of reality. (Logically, this would imply that there are gods for good, evil, justice, truth, etc., but these "gods" are also said to be "unbiased" towards good or evil. How a possible god of justice could be "unbiased" toward either good or evil is beyond me.) Again, this is perversely profound, in that if there were a world wherein no supreme, objective standard of morality existed, then the logical extreme would be that there would be no supreme, objective standard of morality at all. Any honest atheist philosopher would say just as much, if not more so. Therefore, Sebastian and his cohorts are perfectly justified in committing acts of injustice, and have no reason to pretend to have a moral code, because there is no basis to have such a code if there is in fact no God, or even many gods. In the words of Fydor Dostoevsky, "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted."

This is all rather ironic, as there are plenty of "good guys" who mainly consist of the aforementioned humorless, self-righteous prigs, and also plenty of bad guys who readily admit that they're "morally bankrupt" and on the side of evil, including Sebastian's boss, Xanith. It's even acknowledged that Hell exists, and that all of these "gods" have both angels and demons working for them. The convoluted nature of this invented theology is nonetheless quite disturbing if given sufficient thought. It doesn't help that there's a lot of attention given to the various acts of necromancy and "dark magic" employed by our villains, which is disgustingly portrayed in agonizing detail. Good grief, I'm beginning to understand why people like Jack Chick don't like D&D. 

In sum, we have a mildly intelligent, well-written and illustrated, yet at the same time quite disturbing webcomic, where good and evil are equivalent to blue and orange in difference. It's a world where basic concepts of morality rest upon the whim of the individual, where good is a word and a word is air. (Thanks for the quote, Shakespeare!) That does sound like a nightmare. As the good book says, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

Image courtesy of tvtropes.org