Garreth Martin:
jh> > Heortlings are ever going to be surprised by the actions and
> > reactions of Storm/Earth pantheon cultists, even from other tribes,
>Exactly. So a work written to describe these people would, I
>thought, benefit from describing who they actually are and how they
>actually behave, rather than limiting itself to the ideal of moral
>behaviour.
But the myths are not solely about "moral behavior". They also inform how its culture thinks, acts and does magic.
>If I applied the same logic to thew real world, I would
>be obliged to conclude that no christian state ever waged war,
>certainly not on another christian state, becuase if the
>injunction "thou shalt not kill."
The actual injunction is far closer to "you shall not murder" which is still a forbidden practice in virtually all postchristian states and it does not preclude the "just war", the existence of which can be deduced from other portions of the bible. And yes, practice of the "just war" was something that exercised legal minds in the middle ages.
>But this is manifestly false; I
>might know that any given culture values the injunction as a moral
>ideal, but that in the day to day experience real people recognise
>the the moral ideal is an ideal and they do not, for the most part,
>feel overly bound to honour in any and all circumstances.
So? The set of moral ideals is still useful for knowing how people are expected to act and they also illustrate examples of behaviour that would be considered bad. Kinstrife in Orlanthi mythology is an example of this.
--Peter Metcalfe
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