Terry Pratchett's unpublished works destroyed

[vrf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think it's just plain wrong to do that.

How intolerant and judgmental of you…

But actually I agree that an accusation without evidence against a specific person is not a good thing to do, even though I don’t feel my snarky comments rise to that level. And if I’d spent more than a second on my off-hand remark, I might have worded it differently:

I can’t be so naïve as to believe someone doesn’t have a copy of that drive.

Still, I’m curious by such language as “just plain wrong to do that.” In this age when humanity has supposedly thrown off the shackles of a transcendent moral code, what is “wrong” at all about a guy making random comments on the internet, even if your personal gut reaction is that it is out of bounds? Sure, I generally agree that it’s wrong, but why do you think is it wrong? If you’re going to be accusing me of some moral violation, please cite for me the supposed code that I have violated. (I have weighed my remarks against libel laws, and do not feel they qualify. If you do believe they qualify, you are welcome to do what is in your power to begin legal proceedings against me.)

So I am going to double down on the joke:

In the two and a half years since Mr. Pratchett passed away, I find it impossible to believe that his personal assistant or lawyer has not created or secured a backup copy of the hard drive that was just destroyed a couple weeks ago. His public comments have already made it clear that he has read portions of those unfinished works. Are we really to believe that he didn’t make himself a copy of those works?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

In a way, yes. Since after all he has been accused repeatedly of stealing other comedian's jokes, I would say that plenty of other people have already stood up and recited 'his' lines and gotten laughs.

Also, you are taking this all too seriously.

To the first, he stole other comedians jokes (if he did). So it's not just anyone standing up and reciting the lines.

To the second, sure. But not entirely without justification. vrf did ask "Still, ethics conversations always intrigue me. By what standard is it wrong, in your eyes, to casually speculate about what lawyers and publishers might do with the manuscripts of a dead writer?", so I added my support to what Harry was saying ... along with a more relevant comment about the real difficulties involved in removing all copies.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by vrf

[...] Still, I’m curious by such language as “just plain wrong to do that.” In this age when humanity has supposedly thrown off the shackles of a transcendent moral code, what is “wrong” at all about a guy making random comments on the internet, even if your personal gut reaction is that it is out of bounds? Sure, I generally agree that it’s wrong, but why do you think is it wrong? If you’re going to be accusing me of some moral violation, please cite for me the supposed code that I have violated. (I have weighed my remarks against libel laws, and do not feel they qualify. If you do believe they qualify, you are welcome to do what is in your power to begin legal proceedings against me.) [...]

I know this is really between you and Harry, but isn't it obvious that the Golden Rule applies here? How would you feel if your personal or professional ethics were called into question by some stranger for no apparent reason?

Perhaps you may not care, but it does seem unlikely that you cannot imagine that random aspersions by strangers may be hurtful to some.

(We're treading awfully close the P&R forum stuff here.)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by gmw

I know this is really between you and Harry, but isn't it obvious that the Golden Rule applies here? How would you feel if your personal or professional ethics were called into question by some stranger for no apparent reason?

Yes, that's precisely why I think it's wrong to do this.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Regardless of everything else: what can be defined as libel, and what has even a remote possibility of being prosecuted as (let alone legally proclaimed) such are very, very different things.

To suggest that someone without a formal audience of some type (or at least a very large informal one) needs to worry about being smacked for off-the-cuff remarks about someone in the news is quite a stretch.

I suspect some people's respect for Sir Pratchett (and those who he entrusted to protect his legacy) has clouded their sense of anything-can-be-poked-fun-of and/or nothing-is-truly-sacred.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by gmw

So it's not just anyone standing up and reciting the lines.

Sorry this is now so off the thread topic. But your argument in post #41 and the quote above (that the difference between a humorous offhand post in this thread about a nefarious lawyer keeping a back-up copy and Johnny Carson telling jokes about the President) seems to imply that jokes can only be told by professional, certified comedians. That just seems nuts to me.

If I am wrong, please do clarify what you meant.

[DiapDealer]

But the Golden Rule is not binding in any sense. It has never been the socially practiced default. It's alright to personally adhere to its concept (and wish others did too), but you don't really have any standing to expect everyone else to do the same. Certainly not in the gap where it ends and laws begin, anyway. It's a utopian dream. Everyone violates it in one way or another. Why pretend to know when it's OK, or not OK to ignore it?

[kennyc]

I say ask yourself WWTD*?







*What Would Terry** Do







**Or One of His Characters

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Sorry this is now so off the thread topic. But your argument in post #41 and the quote above (that the difference between a humorous offhand post in this thread about a nefarious lawyer keeping a back-up copy and Johnny Carson telling jokes about the President) seems to imply that jokes can only be told by professional, certified comedians. That just seems nuts to me.

If I am wrong, please do clarify what you meant.

Completely nuts. All I meant was that random/off-the-cuff comments are not always readily identifiable as humorous to all readers/listeners. You introduced the subject of comedians casting aspersions, to which my argument is that comedians (generally) get away with it because they know what they're doing.

Take Kenny for example, who obviously agrees with you have I've taken this all too seriously. And yet I ran into much the same problem, but reversed, with Kenny some time ago. I remember it well because I even wrote a poem about it as a sort of apology (see the relevant thread in the Writer's Corner). Context is important, and we sometimes say things that can be interpreted in ways we did not expect.

[Cinisajoy]

At least with a comedian on a stage, you know it is a joke.

[SleepyBob]

I know -- there was a comedian a while back that made a joke that Trump actually wanted to build a physical wall on our border. LOL

[vrf]

Originally Posted by gmw

Isn't it obvious that the Golden Rule applies here?

As I seem to have entrenched myself in the position of the devil's advocate, I guess the easy response to this would be: Why should you or I care about some dumb old rule? Tacking a metallic color to the front of the word "Rule" doesn't mean all that much to me, even if it sounds nice and even if lots of other people throughout history have generally agreed with the sentiment. I have weighed the costs to my popularity at parties, how I'll no doubt be affected by the perception that I am somehow unethical. (Whatever that means.) But I simply do not care. Pound your pulpit all you like, but you have no grounds to insist that I live by your cute little rules.

And as DiapDealer noted, the Golden Rule doesn't seem to be all that popular these days, anyway. It seems instead that we all live by: Do unto others in a way that is most convenient, pleasurable and entertaining to you, without being overly expensive. Let's call that the "Iron Rule."

[DiapDealer]

I've always thought adhering strictly to the Golden Rule was rather a selfish way to behave, actually. Why assume the way you expect to be treated in every situation is acceptable to everyone else in the world?

[gmw]

DiapDealer, I hadn't so much ignored your earlier post as decided it was possibly not appropriate to continue this on this thread. But since you and vrf seem interested...

The Golden Rule was cited as an answer to the question - it's why I see the behaviour cited as being wrong. And while the Golden rule may not ever have been the social default, it has always been a social default. (Think of the standard parenting phrase: "How would you like it if you brother/sister/someone did that to you?")

vrf, you ask why we should care about this rule, and the answer is in that link: because it is built in. This is partly evidenced by, as Wikipedia noted "The concept occurs in some form in nearly every religion and ethical tradition." Also...

The Golden Rule, as noted in the Wikipedia link I gave above, in evolutionary terms is called "reciprocal altruism". Understand this background you can also understand why people tend to limit their empathy - and so their application of the Golden Rule - to people they know, or people they see as being the same as themselves. But times they are a changing. Many things we used to reserve only for our immediate tribe we now extend far beyond. Not consistently, and not universally, but still significantly more broadly than our ancestors. We are now much more inclined (when we bother stop to think about it) to accept that the person on the receiving end may be someone not unlike ourselves, and to adjust our behaviour accordingly.

This subject is (slightly) more on topic that it at first appears. The Golden Rules is about empathy, about being able to see others as similar to ourselves and to be able to put ourselves in their position and see the impact of our behaviour from their perspective. Many of Pratchett's books included a theme that can be related to the Golden Rule:

From: Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because -- what with trolls and dwarfs and so on -- speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

To Granny Weatherwax's neat summary: "And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things."

In several of the books we see the various species (generically "people" in the eyes of the story) being brought together to understand that they were not so different after all, and so to understand that doing nasty things to the other species was like doing nasty things to themselves (often a literal truth, since the never ending cycle of retribution tends to produce such results).

He also refers to the Golden Rule directly in this conversation with The Guardian.

So I do tend to assume that any reader of Pratchett is familiar with at least the concepts surrounding the Golden Rule, even if they do not necessarily recognise it by that name.

And who knows, real people may one day be as smart as some of the Discworld species and come to the same conclusion.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I've always thought adhering strictly to the Golden Rule was rather a selfish way to behave, actually. Why assume the way you expect to be treated in every situation is acceptable to everyone else in the world?

I just realised I had not addressed this aspect. The "Why" is because how we expect to be treated is the first means we have of working out what seems right or wrong. Such an assessment is not always correct, but it is the place from which we start - and, having started there, this same use of empathy can begin to grow and realise our own perspective is not the only possible perspective. The Golden Rule is the starting point, it doesn't have to be the end.