DE Vol. 1 pt. 77

“I bet that didn’t go as you expected,” I said to Zira after everybody else left. Though, we weren’t at the pavilion anymore. The two of us ended up going on a walk outside of the settlement despite it being night out.

There was something nice about going out on walks at night. I’d do that pretty frequently while back on Earth. And it was even better here. Since I only ever lived in cities before, there weren’t any stars or anything visible in the night sky due to all of the light pollution. Only a couple of the brightest stars managed to shine through.

But the world we were on for the game, now that was a night sky. The stars took almost no time to come out for admiration once the sun was down, and they stayed in the sky all night until the sun began to rise again. There were so many that it would be impossible to try and count them all, and the sight made me think of those night sky pictures people would post online that people doubted were real because they never saw anything like it.

But such skies were real. They weren’t possible to see within cities, but they were possible to see outside of them.

“If you’re going to ask a question, you should pay attention when the person answers it,” Zira replied, taking my attention away from the stars.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Did you answer me?”

“I did.”

“Ah. Sorry. I was distracted by the night sky.”

“I could tell. Well, it’s not something that I can fault you for. When we first arrived here, I spent all my nights simply… looking up at the sky. I tried to count the stars a few times but never succeeded. I always either lost where I was or lost track of how many I counted. Eventually, I realized it’s better to just look at them and not think of anything. It’s relaxing.”

“Yeah, I can understand that. Though, it gives me some conflicted feelings being able to see a sky like this.”

“How so?”

“Before I answer that, let me pay attention to your answer for my first statement.”

Zira shrugged. “Like I said when you were too busy looking at the stars, the game went nothing like I expected, but I had fun. Part of what makes a DM a good one is being able to work with your players.”

“But the DM’s fun is important, too. Shouldn’t the players take that into consideration?”

“Obviously. That’s why some people just shouldn’t play together. Not every DM should be paired with every player and vise-versa. Sometimes, the wants of the two parties are so different from one another that no fun can be had. A DM should be willing to work with the players but should also only DM for players who are going to want something in line with the DM’s intentions in the first place. The most important thing is to have a group with similar ideals and desires. If both the players and the DM want the same things, then you never have to worry about that other stuff. You can just focus on having fun with each other.”

“Understandable. The same can be said for most things in life, really. Too bad the world rarely ever works out that way. People try to force their differences to work together instead of leaving to go and find others who will be more naturally accepting of their preferences.”

“I’m surprised to hear that from you.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re always all about equality and cooperation and whatnot. I would have thought you would be the type who prefers people to try and force their way through differences for greater benefit than to simply split up and stick to their own.”

“Ah.” She had a fair point there. “I understand what you mean, and I wish that we lived in a world where everybody would be happy to try and push aside differences to work together… but we ultimately don’t live in a world like that, and I wouldn’t force people to get along. What I care about is tolerance. You don’t have to understand somebody, and you don’t have to accept their way of living, but you should tolerate them so long as they don’t interfere with your own way of living. While I encourage people to try and live together and broaden their experiences to see that coexistence and the like is pretty great, I don’t necessarily think somebody is a horrible person for wanting to stick to what they know and live with others who are the same, so long as they’re not trying to harm anybody nor encouraging harm against anybody else.”

“So, rather than change the intolerant, you would tolerate them instead?”

“Preferably, but that realistically has issues of its own that we have a name for: the tolerance paradox. By tolerating the intolerant, you let those intolerant ideas grow and spread to the point where they endanger tolerance. So in order to have true tolerance, you can’t tolerate the intolerant, as ironic or hypocritical as it might sound.”

“Then what is your stance on it all?”

“My stance is that… I don’t know. As much as I wish I could have a clear answer to this problem, I don’t have one. When the intolerant claim that they just want to have their own communities and be left alone without bothering anybody else, I want to believe them, and I would support their right to have that… but it almost never stops there and claims of wanting to be left alone are typically just masks to get attention away from them. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to force anybody to change who they are, and I obviously wouldn’t support outright censoring them.”

Zira sighed and shook her head. “I understand, unfortunately. I have thought about it myself a few times. There are countless people who I view as having horrible beliefs in need of changing, but how would I go about changing them if I had the power to? Censoring them would prevent their beliefs from spreading as easily, but it would make the censored even more passionate. Allowing them to spread their ideas and openly challenging them when possible could prevent some from being swayed and may even convert some who have those beliefs, but they will still slowly convert more and more to their beliefs. The simplest solutions to the problem are all… rather horrible and on par with my father’s actions, so I would never go for those either.”

I nodded along with pretty much everything she had to say. “I want everybody to have free will without laws and the ability to live however they want, but I would only truly be comfortable with that as long as they’re all like me. I would happily live in a world full of people like me. But since not everybody is like me, unfortunately, laws and regulations are pretty important.”

“I didn’t know you had such a narcissistic side to you.”

“I’m American. I have to be at least a little narcissistic. But my narcissism aside, the simplest, or maybe the most ethical, solution would be to simply… improve education. Rather than try to change the minds of the current adults, overhaul education so that future generations learn better.”

“One could argue that such an approach is the same as brainwashing by educating the youth with only one ‘right’ perspective.”

“Yeah, but what else can be done? I’m not going to support rounding everybody up and tossing them into gulags until they change their opinions, and I’m not going to support sitting by doing nothing while letting hatred fester. I want to believe in education. If we educate the future generations to be critical thinkers who fairly analyze all available information to them, and we give them all the information they need to form as unbiased of an opinion as possible, then I want to believe that they will overwhelmingly come to what we see as the right conclusion.”

“If only it were as simple as having the power to snap one’s fingers and changing the minds of everybody.”

“Even if it was that simple, I’d be against it. People need to change on their own. Even if somebody has opinions or beliefs that I consider outright evil, I wouldn’t want to force change onto them.”

“I have to say, as much as I respect that position of yours, and while I know that my brother would agree with you… I can’t help but to find it too soft. I would rather commit a short-term evil for long-term good than to simply hope for the best with a slow and long process. If it were within my means to snap my fingers and change the minds of everybody I disagree with, I would not hesitate to use such a power in an instant.”

“Some people say that a good leader is one who embraces tyranny once to solidify their rule, and then never again. But the problem is trusting somebody to never abuse that power or to rely on it again. Even myself… I wouldn’t use that power. I can say all day that I would never let power corrupt me, but nobody truly knows what they would do in a situation until they’re in it. I fear that if I had that power, and used it once and saw how effective and easy it was, that I would be too tempted and potentially resort to using it again.”

Zira didn’t say anything for a few moments after that. When she did eventually speak up again, she sounded disappointed with herself. “I wish I could say that I know I would not abuse that power… but I can’t.”

“The easy way out isn’t always the best way out. And even if somebody only abuses that power for ‘good,’ what one person defines as good is what another person defines as evil. So even though my preferred path may be slow and long, and would give those I disagree with even more time to spread their beliefs, at least I would be giving everybody a fair opportunity to learn and choose their own paths. If people ultimately choose to nuke the world and exterminate the human race, then that’s their choice. I just have faith in humanity and believe that they would choose the ‘right’ path given enough education and information. Which kind of brings me to your question.”

“I forget what my question even was.”

“You wanted to know why I felt conflicted about the night sky.”

“Oh. Right. Why are you conflicted?”

“Because of what we just talked about: choice. Free will. I believe that everybody deserves to live in a world where they can look up at the sky and see countless stars above us, but so many of our choices contradict that being possible. You can’t just shut off all the lights in a town or city at night. People need to be able to see. Not everybody is on the exact same schedule. Light pollution will always block out the stars. Even here, as we expand and grow, especially as we get into the later stages of civilization where we undergo an industrial revolution and all that, we’re not going to be able to see the stars the same way that we can now. Sure, people can always travel away from the cities, but that’s not always good enough. People shouldn’t have to make special trips into the literal middle of nowhere as far away from civilization as they can get just to see the stars in the sky. So long as people want to congregate in a few focused areas where massive lighting is required, this is going to be an issue, and I would never fight against people’s desire to live in a city even if their desire ruins the night sky for everybody else.”

“It sounds like you’re pretty set in your opinion. What makes you conflicted about that?”

“Well, even if I wouldn’t act on it, there’s still a part of me that wishes I could make everybody spread out and live in smaller communities that don’t require massive light sources everywhere to light up the night sky. It’s my belief versus my selfish preference making me feel conflicted.”

“Ah. That is more understandable. Well, at the very least, I believe that makes you an even better leader. To know that your desires contradict what the majority want, and to side with the majority even so, is how a leader should be, I believe.”

“Then you run into the problem of when you should or shouldn’t listen to majority rule. The majority of people don’t always want the right thing, after all. At what point do we tell the majority that they’re wrong and force them to deal with what they don’t like?”

“This is why I prefer the benevolent dictator approach.”

“Benevolent dictators are for fantasies, not reality.”

“And fantasies are better than reality in most cases.”

“Fair enough.”

Zira stopped and looked straight up at the sky. “But I will say this. Should the day come in this game where we can no longer see the stars from our tents, you can expect me to live on the outskirts where the stars are still visible. Such a sky is not a sight in Hell, and I would see that I get to enjoy it for as long as possible.”

“I’ll be visiting you pretty frequently in that event.”

“Am I not allowed a break from you?”

“I’m American. It’s my duty to stick around everybody until they get sick and tired of me and just want me to go away.”

“Trust me, you already do a great job of that.”

With that, Zira shot me a wink, gave me a pat on my shoulder, and turned around to head back toward the settlement.