|
But even if he had gone ahead in full agreement, knowing exactly what would happen to him - which personally I don't believe, as his final state is such that he would not have been able to understand it before it happened to him * that still doesn't make it acceptable that he is broken to such a degree. Its still 'wrong', in the same way that even if all the young men of Tolkien's generation who fought on the Somme had volunteered (& most of them did) in order to save their country, & went over the top willingly, the mass slaughter was still 'wrong', because willingness to suffer on the individual's part doesn't excuse the one who inflicts that suffering. It may be a 'fact' that that's how things are in the world, but that 'fact' is simply not good enough.
*It would almost be equivalent to saying to someone who had never felt any pain before that you were going to drill into one of their teeth, & that it would hurt - but even if they agreed to you going ahead, having no real conception of what 'hurt' means they couldn't be said to have really agreed.
|