prismatica | Text [Username: KRen]

Why do you say that?

[[As it's... honestly a bit uncomfortably familiar]]

Observation of the world.

Though it is bothersome to have those who wronged you on your mind, trying to find the good in them is only giving them even more power of you that they do not deserve. They hurt you before. It's insolent to ask for a second chance.

He isn't asking for anything like that.

[[Even the very idea of Isaka asking for anything remotely like that was something too absurd to even think on.]]

And I'm not looking for good in him. Just humanity.

Humanity is often uglier than it should be.

It isn't that humanity is ugly, but that some humans have given it up, and become the true monsters.

Not just some. Too many to view them as merely outliers.

That isn't true. Even when their actions make them stand out to where it's all you can see, they are the true minority.

Is that how it was in your world? It isn't how it was in mine. Crime and injustice seeped through every layer of society. It took a miracle to change this.

What kind of miracle

A supernatural force punishing the criminals the law couldn't reach. It lowered the crime rate by 70% percent. Society as I have left it before coming here is finally one where I would be inclined to agree that evildoers form the minority.

I simply do not think it is any kind of 'default' - unless you come from a world far more principled than mine was.

[[There is a very long pause as Tachibana gets a bit lost in flashbacks]]

Every world I have been to, those with good hearts outnumber those with no compassion for their fellows. Most who do ill do so out of the misfortune of their own circumstances, which is why we work to eliminate the roots of that misfortune.

While I do not argue that there are social circumstances that are less than favorable and that need to be changed fundamentally, I do not believe that they are an adequate justification for hurting others.

Having been born as one of the less fortunate as well, I feel strongly that there is such a thing as an element of choice in all of our lives. Choosing to harm others does not merit forgiveness.

Not everyone is given choice.

You can't act on evil passively. It's active. And in action, there always is a choice, even if it may not be a good one.

Not all actions are because of a choice.

Some happen regardless of your will to stop it.

I am curious as to why you still register that person as a culprit then. If the misdeed happened regardless of someone's best efforts, I would not immediately parse them as the perpetrator.

[[There are so many responses that he half types out before deleting. Everything in his mind is a mess of flashbacks, regrets and frustration. It takes him a moment to finally pull himself back to the present and to regain the formal, colder air he needs to stop from yelling about things this person would never be able to understand.]]

A person who steals to avoid starvation is still arrested the same as the person who steals on a whim. Someone forced by circumstance to harm another despite their efforts to avoid it is still the one who has caused the harm.

Punishment does not resolve the situation. Only removing the source of the misfortune that cause the situation to exist.

That is a trite example, if you pardon me saying so.

In the vast majority of cases there are many steps one can take before reaching the state of imminent death by starvation.

Again, I am not arguing that hunger is not a cause that needs to be addressed and removed. It is and it should be a priority of every community that the needs of its members are met.

And yet, your so-called miracle delt only in punishment.

It's a miracle, yes, but not a miracle cure for all society. The divine doesn't absolve people from the need to take responsibility for themselves.

Surely you can understand how reducing the amount of effort that goes into crimefighting and wars would grant resources towards the solving of other social issues?

The divine only cares for its own views, not that of those who face the consequences of its actions.

[[He has two lives of experience to back up that bitterness.]]

Have the policemen in your world become doctors? Have those who only know how to fight been able to find life without battle?

Has that change happened, in your world?

Soldiers have returned home to their families and found different employment. Police have stopped being vastly overworked and can direct their resources towards more common matters previously ignored.

It's a process. We were only five years into that process.

Do you presume personal experience with the divine?

I have fought against the will of God in my world, as that will would have seen the destruction of all living beings with in it.

The divine of other worlds I have met held no better understanding of the mortals they toyed with, or the other worlds they nearly tore apart in their desire for their own gain.

Those are not Gods like the God of my world. Selfish supernatural creatures aren't the same as the divine justice. Not all that claims to be a God actually is such.

[ It's nice to have this conversation over text where he can just state things with absolute certainty, when in reality not all about his faith is quite as clear to him anymore. It's unsettling. ]

I know for a fact that the God that I fought was the same one who set into motion the order of our world. And I have met the gods that oversaw another world, and know for truth that they were who they were.

Many who deal in punishment talk of justice. They decide that they are worthy to judge and execute judgement. But any force, mortal or otherwise, that takes justice into their own hands, is only using justice as an excuse.

[[A lesson that Kiryu had taught him all too well, as much as he hadn't at all wanted to hear those words from his former mentor...]]

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