Author Topic: Yeerks - Evil or not?  (Read 5037 times)

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Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #15 on: December 07, 2011, 11:39:46 AM »

The question is if they have a soul. What is a soul, though? Well, my definition would be feelings and thoughts, and I don't care what people say, animals have these too. To kill to eat can be considered evil, although animals have the excuse of not knowing better. When I eat, I do like the Indians and thank the food beforehand. I know it sounds utterly stupid, but hey, it helps my conscience. I try to honor animals for being our food. The Yeerks don't do that. They don't honor their hosts, at least the ones in power don't, and that makes those Yeerks wrong, IMO, although we've seen that not all Yeerks are like that. You could argue that Yeerk control is like rape. OMG that's a debate for a whole other topic...

Offline Terenia

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #16 on: December 07, 2011, 12:53:42 PM »
Sorry for tearing all your posts apart, Zakryn. :) I just like this topic.


The question is if they have a soul. What is a soul, though? Well, my definition would be feelings and thoughts, and I don't care what people say, animals have these too.
If we're debating this all based on your definition of things, then your answer will always be right and ours wrong. :P Personally, I don't believe in a "soul". But, if we go by your definition of "having feelings and thoughts", yes Yeerks definitely have those. But their thoughts and feelings are DIFFERENT from ours. That's an important distinction, I think.

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To kill to eat can be considered evil, although animals have the excuse of not knowing better.
To kill to eat is not evil - not if it is necessary for your survival. And the Yeerks are not killing anything. Besides, even if animals did know better, they are biologically capable of processing certain foods. If you give a lion nothing but tofu it is not going to be a healthy lion.

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When I eat, I do like the Indians and thank the food beforehand. I know it sounds utterly stupid, but hey, it helps my conscience. I try to honor animals for being our food.
That's not stupid. Praying/thanking/honoring/etc. prior to a meal is a fairly common practice among many.

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The Yeerks don't do that. They don't honor their hosts, at least the ones in power don't, and that makes those Yeerks wrong, IMO, although we've seen that not all Yeerks are like that.
See that part I bolded? I think that's what makes all the difference. Some Yeerks do terrible, morally suspect things. But not all Yeerks. You said it yourself, not all Yeerks are like that. How can you condemn a whole race as evil if only some Yeerks act that way?

And how do we know that some Yeerks don't honor their hosts? You give thanks for your food prior to eating it, I don't. Does that make me, and by extension, all of humanity evil? Of course not.

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You could argue that Yeerk control is like rape. OMG that's a debate for a whole other topic...
Well, first of all, rape is sexual in nature. If you compare everything you are forced into to rape then that's a slippery slope. I think slavery is a much more apt comparison than rape, but you're right, that's a debate for a different topic. :)

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Offline RYTX

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #17 on: December 07, 2011, 03:42:58 PM »
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Well, my definition would be feelings and thoughts, and I don't care what people say, animals have these too. To kill to eat can be considered evil, although animals have the excuse of not knowing better.

Um, huh? They have feelings and thoughts, but the excuse of not knowing better? does not compute

In case, if every or any Yeerk is evil is too much about opinion and point of view.
It's easy to as if enslaving someone is evil, harder to say every slave holder is.

Those ambiguous concepts no one ever bothers to hammer out
« Last Edit: December 07, 2011, 11:25:43 PM by RYTX »
Something, something, oh crap I pissed everyone off again....

Offline Noelle

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #18 on: December 07, 2011, 05:49:48 PM »
I really don't even think that the most brutal of the Yeerks could be considered evil or wrong.


Think about how they are, and how their society works.  It's true that there are some Yeerks that have a more utopian view of what they want their world to be like.  But they aren't in the governing body for a reason.  They can't openly say that for a reason.  It isn't how their culture was structured.  In order to transform their society into a society that only takes willing hosts, millions of Yeerks would go without hosts.  Millions would be sentenced to a life that would essentially be considered hell compared to what it was.  How do you choose who gets to see, hear, and smell and who gets to live in the dark?  Even if we assumed the entire Yeerk race was nothlitized into humans or whatever creature they chose, to do so would cause massive chaos and unrest in their society.  They would have to separate the ones that would abuse that power and the ones that could live peacefully, how do you do that without legislation that would be brutal in its own rite?  If anything, THOSE ones would be classified as 'wrong' because they were hurting the rest of their race.  They were adapting to ANOTHER culture's way of life, not their own.  They were sabotaging the people they came from.  If anything, they were forging their own separate culture, then it's just back to a survival of the fittest match to see which side would thrive to control the rest of the Yeerks.


On the other side, I don't think you could even say Visser 3/1 could be classified as wrong or evil.  Yeah, he was brutal and merciless and made it his goal to rule by complete force.  He had to...did you see his competition?  People looking to cut him down and take his throne at every turn, people who ATE other Yeerks had it out for him, people collaborating with the animorphs to take him down just for revenge.  He had to do those things to keep his people in line.  He would have never in a million years been able to keep control of Yeerk culture without such means, and even in the end it fell apart.  If he didn't do it, someone else would have.  That was just the way Yeerk culture was.  Eat or be eaten.

If you think about it, that would be the only way you could hold such a society together.  When you are basically becoming one with another creature, how long until you adopt their views and thoughts just from living in their head day in and day out?  Not to mention you HAD TO live their life and their way.  Visser Three had to basically hold together a culture comprised of seven or eight different races AND fight a three way war.  You ain't going to do that by sending thank you cards.  If he didn't rule the Yeerks with a heavy fist, his people would have fallen apart, and in the end that would have been wrong.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2011, 06:03:48 PM by Noelle_Winters »

Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #19 on: December 07, 2011, 08:50:02 PM »
I'm not trying to condemn all Yeerks. I am trying to point out that their government is evil and their leaders are. I think I might be fudging my words.

Noelle: I'm curious - you think there is no such thing as evil. Well, if you were to murder someone you love in cold blood, even if it was acceptable by social standards, would that not make it wrong, even evil? Not self-defense, not for a reason, just random violence. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just generally curious.

Offline Terenia

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #20 on: December 07, 2011, 09:13:21 PM »
I would agree that their government and their leaders are corrupt, yes. But the question of the thread isn't "Is the Yeerk Empire Corrupt?" It's "Yeerks - Evil or not?"...that seems to imply all Yeerks.

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Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #21 on: December 07, 2011, 09:16:33 PM »
Oops. :-[ Well, we can still debate the subject. Differing people have differing views. And like I said, while trying to engage in healthy, mentally stimulating debate, I have screwed up my words in a fashion worthy of Archie Bunker.

Offline Ouroboros

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #22 on: December 07, 2011, 10:02:00 PM »
Everything I was thinking about when I saw this topic has already been said!

Yeerks are totally not evil.

Weird and alien to us, with bizarre methods and mannerisms that we might consider to be "bad", sure. Simply evil, not so much.

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Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #23 on: December 07, 2011, 11:13:02 PM »
I finally figured out where this went wrong. I just wanted to talk about Yeerks in general, with a subsection being whether what they were doing was wrong. But I goofed it up by putting the word "evil" in the thread. Not one of my finest moments as a RAFian... ::) So you see, I was never asking if the Yeerks were "PURE EVIL!!! Mwuahahaha!" I know they're not. ;)

Offline Bootlebat

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #24 on: June 20, 2014, 11:15:13 PM »
I would say the Yeerks are not inherently evil any more than humans. It is more just because of their society and culture.

Offline Shenmue654

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Re: Yeerks - Evil or not?
« Reply #25 on: June 25, 2014, 04:53:17 PM »
I find the subject of good and evil inherently, obsessively fascinating--- And I get into contact with some weird people by being such. :P

As has already been mentioned, I don't think it's fair to call a whole culture evil. Hell, even the books seem to be wrestling with this idea. The Yeerks might've been "comfortable enough" in the pools, but is it right to deny them a whole society on that basis? They've pointed out countless times that they had only a Neolithic culture before the Andalites came, and they only had that because they took the bodies of Gedds. Without their hosts, they become...well...lit tle more than animals, in a sense. Sentient pond slugs. Beyond the megalomaniacal designs of some of their leaders, all they ever wanted was to have a worthwhile future.

Between brutally taking slaves and no culture at all, I'd go with the former.

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On the other side, I don't think you could even say Visser 3/1 could be classified as wrong or evil.  Yeah, he was brutal and merciless and made it his goal to rule by complete force.  He had to...did you see his competition?  People looking to cut him down and take his throne at every turn, people who ATE other Yeerks had it out for him, people collaborating with the animorphs to take him down just for revenge.  He had to do those things to keep his people in line.  He would have never in a million years been able to keep control of Yeerk culture without such means, and even in the end it fell apart.


Actually there's some indication that the original Visser One had a pretty good and possibly nastier model going and developing host sympathy (She's a complicated person...) but that it didn't work out because it was culturally unsettling to the Empire take over humans by appealing to their humanity. Most people think that human beings wouldn't throw away their freedom en masse for some nebulous concept....but we throw away our lives for such things. We slaughter each other for such things. Done right and not in a kid's series, with more knowledge of humanity, Visser One could have created a religion. And a monster.

As for whether Visser Three himself was "evil"....You could say that in a different context, that's the very question I'm trying to answer. By the standards of human society, I'd say yes. ....I'll come back to you on that one in thirty years. :p




« Last Edit: June 25, 2014, 04:58:03 PM by Shenmue654 »