Quote:
Originally Posted by Stoatly Grimes
If a race of beings is determined that they are going to kill you and eat your flesh, then I think it's reasonable to attempt to prevent them from doing so. Evil is always an arbitrary concept, but self-preservation is fairly black-and-white (at least in this case).
I imagine the thought-process goes something like this: "The angry orc coming towards me with a blood-stained scimitar does not want to chat; rather, he means to cause significant harm upon my person, because he hates me. Call me belligerent, but I reckon I'll kill him first, as I do not wish to be brutally hacked apart."
It doesn't really matter why or even if they are truly evil, beyond the philosophical interest. If you hesitate to kill them because they might not be evil, they will kill you, perhaps after sustained torture.  |
Well, well, but that's what's been contested on threads like this or the one which had been here recently - I think it was called something like "Orcseys-always evil?" or something like that. But I think this, what you say, is the usual approach from an average Orc towards a human or elf, or (not to forget) also from an average Gondorian soldier towards an Orc. But I would like to point out that it's not necessarily like that. 90% of this approach (of this thinking "if I don't kill it, it kills me") is the chain of wrongdoings from Orcs to Men and from Men to Orcs in the past, which is passed down generations and taught to little Gondorian children or pressed into the heads of Orcs by Sauron. It is "reasonable", under these circumstances, but when you go back and come to the first, "Utumno generation", there was the first impulse - we are quite lucky that we can see to the beginning of the chain of events, and pretty clearly! - and that came from Morgoth, who said: "Now, go out and raid some Elven villages." The first Orcs, basically, had little other choice as slaves. The Elves, then, had little other choice than to defend themselves just the way like
SG illustrated above - something they haven't ever seen before suddenly jumped out of the bushes and started to massacre them. Okay. And from that moment on, it was always like that - thanks to deathless guys like Morgoth who kept sending Orcs out, and thus the other races started to build the long-term experience: "Orcs always kill people". And also it was quite likely for some Orcs to actually start to enjoy these raids, killing and such. The Orcs also were not doing much else in their life than raiding Elven/human settlements, and so for them, this was also "normal". Maybe, at one point, one or two stopped to think like this, whether it is right to do it - however still the majority was used to it, the same as let's say humans were to cultivating crops, or it was still worth it more, or easier to leave things like they are than trying to raise a rebellion against Morgoths&Saurons up there, and such... I think it would take a long, long transformation with the condition of the Orcs being set free at first, until they could become at least somewhat "peaceful" race. But on the side of the Free Peoples, there was more of a chance to come up with a different approach to the other side (for example if such a tribe of "free Orcs" formed).