[RFC]A little morality... or ethics

[Dartz]

As a few know, I've got this self-insert fic that's been crawling along for a while now.

The last chapter posted involved an Angel that was stuck in orbit where NERV couldn't reach it, so nuclear weapons were used, with the consequence that a good chunk of the fallout got smeared across Europe. The other kind of fallout follows.

I'm trying to put the next part together and a large part of doing that is dealing with the fallout, and the ethics of it, and after three or four attempts I'm starting to put together something that might make sense and I'm wondering what people think. Does it make sense, or is it a little bit overwrought?

We crossed a moral Rubicon. There was no turning back. The unthinkable was now thinkable again. And every single time another Angel comes, someone, somewhere would point to what we'd done and ask;

Why not again?

It was so much easier to just nuke the bloody things. So much cheaper. Especially if you just set them off in the same place over and over again.

If we fail again. They will do it again. And again. And they'll keep doing it until the Angels adapt to the new threat like they always do and suddenly, they'll be faced with an enemy not even a nuclear weapon can destroy. Or worse, they'll succeed and be left with a stockpile of new super-nuclear weapons to deal with.

And the other nuclear weapon states will look on and start to wonder what will happen to those weapons after the Angels have been defeated. They'll start to feel that little pang of fear that they might be used, that someone might have a first-strike advantage over them and might be crazy enough to use it.

Because there was now precedent for it. Because nuclear war has happened. The doomsday clock struck midnight and the day after wasn't really that bad after all. There were still three billion people left. We weren't bombed back to the Stone Age, just the 1960's.

So they'll build up a new stockpile. Stockpiles breed stockpiles until a whole new Cold War arms race begins and manmade Armageddon looms each time a Middle-Eastern tin-pot decides to kick up a storm in a desert teacup. We'd save the world from the Angels, only to deliver it into the embrace of assured destruction in the process.

That worried me.

The one question no mecha series ever really asks. What happens after the enemy is defeated and the super-weapons built to destroy them still remain? What next?

That was how project E was sold to the world, it was a way out of that trap. I guessed that was the real reason for the five-minute timer on the battery in the meeting with the Americans. An umbilical cable rendered us useless against an army. Powerful enough to defeat the Angels, but powerless to defeat human beings away from this specific city.

But...

When we reach the point where Armageddon has kicked down the front door, and there's no other option left? When another step down the slippery slope is the less-terrifying option?

We face a responsibility unlike no other in the history of mankind, that's what Misato said. We edged a step closer to another potential doomsday again, in ten years time. And because we did, we avoided a certain one tomorrow. We may have given the Angels a shot at neutralising our trump card, but in the process bought ourselves another few weeks to adapt ourselves.

We may have condemned thousands to a lingering death without giving them a chance to have a say in it.

But if we didn't, we'd all be dead. If we'd chosen to take the moral high ground and refused to make that decision, then wouldn't that have been as good as choosing to kill everyone?

The more I think of it, the more I realise that maybe I was wrong to compare Misato's decision with living in Omelas. It's more complicated than that. When those who turn their backs on the city powered by a forsaken child leave, there's no consequence to the city. It's inhabitants will continue as they always have and those few who find it reprehensible can continue to leave.

If we choose to leave our Omelas, then it's destroyed. Along with us. If that's the case, do we have the right to leave? When the stakes are as high as absolute destruction, is it right to condemn the entire world just so we won't die feeling guilty?

Or isn't that a greater sin? How arrogant would that be?

As Eva pilots our duty isn't just to defeat the Angels, I think it's larger than that. It's to defeat Armageddon itself; from whatever source. We are the hope of the world that there will be a future, the belief that humanity is worth saving. NERV - away from SEELE and Instrumentality Committees and Old Men - is the single greatest manifestation of the human determination to survive - to do what it takes and go beyond the impossible, just so someone, somewhere can see a new sunrise.

It's a condensation of our mutual determination to not just slip quietly away into the night, but fight tooth and nail for every breath, for the chance to have a future - any future.

Our duty is to do what we can to prevent the use of nuclear weapons against the Angels because each time that happens, it's one more chance for the Angels to adapt, one more sin on our collective souls, one more tick of the doomsday clock advancing back around to self-destruction once again.

The Nuclear Option should never, ever be the convenient option. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that it's an option that never has to be used again. But, it should never not be an option either. Because the threat of self destruction is - ultimately - nothing but a threat. And I can think of no greater sin than allowing the destruction of the entire world and all who live there just so I can die with a clear conscience.

Maybe I was rationalising it to myself, trying to convince my conscience that what we did was right inspite of my true gut feelings. I don't think I could ever feel comfortable with it, not while they were still pointing chirping geiger-counters at children on the television. Philosophy and ethics were never my strongpoint, but I think I had an answer I could stand over.

"We're still alive. And just rolling over and dying because it's easier than feeling guilty is wrong."

Misato smiled warmly at me. That was the right answer. And I sat there congratulating myself on still being being adult enough to come up with the right answer, like any normal fourteen year old child would.

As a counterpoint, the other pilot's have very different opinions on it....
Asuka's of the opinion that it was the right decision, but Misato made it for absolutely the wrong reasons. She did it purely out of a desire for sheer revenge and hatred, rather than any noble ideas of saving the world.
Shinji is more absolute about it being wrong - he's uncomfortable with living on the suffering of others, regardless. He joined NERV to help people....
Rei is... complicated. She's more uncomfortable with Shinji being uncomfortable with it, than Misato making what seems to her to be the right military decision
Kaworu remarks that "An Angel will do anything to make sure their paradigm of life is the one which survives, why should humanity be any different?"

And I think I know now exactly why Misato got her job.

I spend far too long bothering over these little details. There's a whole mess of stuff that I jotted down that might never even be relevant to the fic at hand.... but it exists.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?