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1 - "meeting ends" involves keeping the world in balance and making sure nobody tries to kill off everyone else

2 - Dialogue from "Escape from the Spirit World."

Yangchen: The Avatar must be compassionate towards all people, and the only way to do that is to live with them. The Avatar must experience sadness... Anger... Joy... and happiness.

Dehumanized? I think not.

From "The Guru":

"Guru Pathik: The Thought chakra is located at the crown of the head. It deals with pure cosmic energy and is blocked by earthly attachment. Meditate on what attaches you to this world... Now, let all of those attachments go. Let them flow down the river. Forgotten.

Aang: (startled) What? Why would I let go of Katara? I...I..I love her.

Guru Pathik: (reasonably) Learn to let her go, or you cannot let the pure cosmic energy flow in from the universe.

Aang: (crossly) Why would I choose cosmic energy over Katara? How could it be a bad thing that I feel an attachment to her?

Guru Pathik: (firmly) You must learn to let go.

...

Guru Pathik: (calling after him) No Aang! By choosing attachment, you have locked the chakra! (Aang draws to a stop) If you leave now you won't be able to go into the Avatar State at all!"

From "Crossroads of Destiny":

"Aang: Well, I met with this Guru who was supposed to help me master the avatar state, and control this great power. But to do it, I had to let go of someone I love, and I just couldn't.

Iroh: Perfection and power are overrated. I think you were very wise to choose happiness and love."

That was one of the central problems of the series' protagonist. Whether to choose power over humanity. People like Ozai and Azula choose power; people like Aang and Iroh choose humanity. One might also draw Christian or Buddhist parallels here, though I'd prefer not to. The point is, in order to become the Avatar one needs to cease being human. And this is in fact continuously demonstrated in the series, with the Avatar ("Avatar State") being totally ruthless and inhuman. I had the impression that Avatars learned to control this ruthlessness with wisdom, much like Aang was taught by the monks. In "Sozin's Comet", however, it turned out that the past Avatars in fact succumbed to the lure of power, and embraced the philosophy of "the ends justify the means". It reminded me of how Anakin Skywalker was pushed to the Dark Side by the machiavellian ideology of the Jedi Council.

In fact, it took the authors a barely believable plot device to overcome this obstacle and make Aang go into Avatar State without shedding all his earthly attachments. I mean, can you believe that all he really needed was a sharp kick in the back? Talk about cop-outs...

The final point here is that once the Avatar sheds all his earthly attachments, he'd probably stop caring about "balance" as well. Moreover, what if the "balance" starts shifting towards goodness, peace etc.? Would the Avatar be required to serve as an agent of chaos and destruction in order to restore the "balance" of Yin/Yang/Good/Evil/Whatever?

PhilosopherSo wrote:

Watching all the nations tortured killed enslaved and imprisoned and doing nothing about it is the trait of man of good character? If I have a gun and I see a man about to stab a child and I have only a split second to think... am I a bigger monster for killing the man or for allowing the child to die because I was more worried about my own spiritual state?

Okay then, how about killing a child to save two children? Or killing 500,000 innocent people to save 1,000,000? Or cutting up one man for body parts to cure 2 or 3 other persons from a lethal illness? Or to cure 10 other persons from a non-lethal, but very painful and horrible disease? These are the sorts of questions that are extremely hard to answer for a moral person, and extremely easy for a pragmatic/machiavellian. In fact, in the most democratic and humane states the law does not take from the rich and give to the poor in equal share, though some might consider that humane. While you enjoy your donuts and computers, children in Uganda are starving to death, and wouldn't it be justifiable and humane to take all the "excess" food/machinery etc. from the rich countries and give it to the third world? See how many people agree to that, though. Some might even call you a communist. And we all know where the communist ideology finished up (i.e. most horrible crimes in the name of most lofty ideals).

This is not about "spiritual state" or feeling good about yourself. This is about good and evil, pure and simple. Is it moral to do an evil act to achieve good ends? As they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The Avatars answer this question far too simply, which betrays them as inhumane powermongers. Whereas it was, IMHO, not too hard to find some sort of an alternative to killing Ozai - even without Spirit-bending, they could have just restrained him like they did with Azula. Once he's immobilised the problem's basically solved. Although forcing someone to lead a Man in the Iron Mask-like existence in a prison for the rest of his life is pretty harsh too, it's still better than taking his life - and please note that capital punishment has long been abolished in all European countries, no matter the person's crimes, so it's even more weird when supposedly good characters on a supposedly children's show preach the opposite ideal.

The Guru: If you leave now, you won't be able to go into the Avatar State at all!

I know. That's what I don't understand.

Yeah, not so funny once you actually stop to think about it.

The Avatar is by all means a god in ATLA universe - he can do whatever he wants, without anyone being able to stop him. A god who disregards all human affection and all human values, with the excepion of "keeping the balance". To keep this balance, he will do anything, by definition including murder, mass destruction, or even genocide. Even if he did this in the name of good, it would be highly questionable from a moral perspective, and should such an entity arrive in our world, most would probably consider him nothing more than an omnipotent tyrant set to forcefully impose his understanding of what is good on the rest of the world.

However, it gets even more complicated once we stop to consider what is actually included in the values the Avatar is sworn to uphold. What is "balance"? Taken from the Buddhist perspective, and from simple logic as well, this concept is beyond moral notions of good and evil. Sozin upset the balance by unleashing a global invasion; but the balance might be just as upset by peaceful assimilation of nations into a global state, and by changing the ruling regimes from monarchies and autocracies to democracies. Should in this case the Avatar interfere in order to restore the status quo? Should he forever keep humanity separated into four nations, ruled by petty kings? If "balance" refers to morality, should he be preventing the triumph of good over evil?

In this respect the Avatar reminds me very much of Robert Sheckley's "Watchbird", about robotic guardians of the peace programmed to punish crime according to a few laconic criteria. The idea proved not only worthless but dangerous, as the watchbirds, highly intelligent and powerful but completely devoid of human sense and values, began interpreting instructions in ways unforeseen by their human creators, and harmful to humanity.

The moral of the story is that justice cannot be inhuman. And the Avatar is precisely that - valuing the abstract and vague notion of "balance" over human lives.

jakndaxluver wrote:

And I fail to see credibility in your argument that past Avatars succumbed to the "lure of power"... The Avatars didn't know there was a way to stop Ozai without killing him, and they gave Aang advice based on their own past experiences.

All their advice boiled down to "do whatever it takes to achieve your goal". If they were speaking from their own experience, then they have been actively applying this principle while alive. For all of their supposed wisdom, none of them actually took the time to examine the situation more thoroughly, nor did they take Aang's humanism seriously enough to at least momentarily doubt their own ruthless approach.

And I think that's what the authors were actually trying to say, and that's why they introduced the "lion-turtle" with its Spirit-bending - as an alternative to the entire Avatar business. All previous Avatars resolved their problems with brute force, and apparently Aang was the first to actually consider humanism as an option - which is why he was chosen to bring back to the world the art of Spirit-bending - an art which had become forgotten once the Avatar had appeared.

jakndaxluver wrote:

Until you have been in a position where you have only a second to think before you MUST act, you cannot accurately predict what you would do.

But that's precisely NOT the case; Aang was out to resolve his moral dilemma well before facing the Fire Lord. And for the most part, he did resolve it before the battle started, so that when he was taking the critical decision his mind was basically already made up.

jakndaxluver wrote:

I think I'd rather die than rot in prison for the rest of my life, especially if I couldn't eat, move or take a dump because of restraints placed on me.

Who said anything about such a level of restraint? Ordinary benders may well be kept in regular prisons, as The Boiling Rock showed us; and for the uber-powerful there is Spirit-bending to make them harmless. And regular confinement is by far preferable to the death penalty, as I am sure any criminal would agree.

Precisely. By the book, the only way to achieve Avatar State is by shedding all earthly attachments - i.e. all that makes us human. In order to save Katara, Aang was read to destoy his love for her - but conveniently was stopped by Azula's lightning. In the finale, so that Aang could kick ass and still get the girl, the authors managed to circumvent this requirement by introducing the concept of opening one's Thought Chakra by a sharp kick in the back (what happened during Aang's fight with Ozai).

No, it's not funny when someone is actually serious about ideas this ridiculous. Again, cartoon show for kids on Nickelodeon.

All you're doing is speculating on what could happen, because none of this has happened, nor was there ever any intent by the creators of anything being represented that way or happening that way.

Edited on 07/21/2008 11:56am Edited 2 total times.

Precisely. By the book, the only way to achieve Avatar State is by shedding all earthly attachments - i.e. all that makes us human. In order to save Katara, Aang was read to destoy his love for her - but conveniently was stopped by Azula's lightning. In the finale, so that Aang could kick ass and still get the girl, the authors managed to circumvent this requirement by introducing the concept of opening one's Thought Chakra by a sharp kick in the back (what happened during Aang's fight with Ozai).

Ha ha, yes, the collective. Need I say fascism, or communism, or something like the French revolution? Doing something for the supposed benefit of the collective (i.e. majority) does not automatically make it moral.

KikitheFiend wrote:

The advice given by the avatars was only to be used as a last resort, and at the time it would have been the only way to end the war, thus save the world.

It was not "last resort" advice; it was the only advice they offered. To them, killing Ozai didn't even seem like a problem. They did not propose, nor did they seriously think about, any alternatives.

KikitheFiend wrote:

Machiavelli also tells us "If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared". Aang achieved this..... it would not have been any different had he killed the Fire Lord.

I see you're serious with this, and the old Florentian almost has you in his sleazy clutches. What he's actually saying, is that if you for some reason need to screw someone over, better kill him so that he can't get back at you. If the gAang actually followed this evil advice, they would have killed both Ozai and Azula, along with any number of people who might have been harboring ill feelings towards them.

KikitheFiend wrote:

As for the Pathik; it was not detachment from the world but from desire and earthly longings for the world. He encouraged Aang to sacrifice his own wishes for the greater good.

Detachment from earthly longings = detachment from the world. You can find this in both Christian and Buddhist tenets (both religions view this world as somewhat evil and tainted by sin, and the goal in both is to detach oneself from this world and transcend into a better place, Heaven or Nirvana). Sorry for bringing up religious parallels again, but it's hard not to when discussing a show so obviouly influenced by religious/ethical concepts.

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