The Chee Reprogramming

[TheWolfEmperor]

What do we know? Erik and a small group of Chee recruited the Animorphs to retrieve a Pemalite Crystal from the Yeerks in order to reprogram the Chee with violent capabilities.

Problem: If the Pemalites were a pacifist race and programmed the Chee to be equally non-violent, why would Erik ever get it into his head to program himself to become violent? Doesn't that very line of thinking imply the awareness of the ability to be violent and therefore make him violent by nature?

Conjecture: The Pemalites have always been aware of violence as they would have frequently encountered or observed other violent races in their travels. They wanted the Chee to be aware of violence as well. The Chee, having witnessed the savage and violent deaths of their masters now have it in their programming that to at least one species, violence was the means to an end.

Problem: A small group of Chee agreed with Erik's plan to reprogram the race for violence. If Erik was waiting outside the facility where the Pemalite Crystal was located to take the crystal from the Animorphs as soon as they escaped, how many Chee did he reprogram? Were there Chee waiting in key parts of the Yeerk Pool, ready to visit violence upon the Yeerks as soon as they were programmed? How thoroughly was their plan made and did Erik have the ability or the wherewithal to reprogram all of them? How long were Chee violent between Erik having killed all of the Yeerks in the facility and their hosts and reviving Marco and company?

Conjecture: If the other Chee were suddenly capable of violence, they might well have caused an untold amount of damage to the Yeerk invasion before their original programming was restored. In the heat of battle, Erik only reprogrammed himself so he could save the Animorphs by killing the Yeerks and their hosts at the facility.

Further Conjecture: Erik might have failed at reprogramming himself for non-violence, as evidenced by the fact that he essentially killed one or both of the two Rachels when he assisted Ax in rejoining him.

Discuss.

[RYTX]

why would Erik ever get it into his head to program himself to become violent?

Because though artificial, he has intelligence, and is able to understand that destruction of something you care about may be prevented with violence. I don't disagree with your conjecture, but I think its possible that they didn't need to explicitly explain what they were banning in the programming, they're capable of figuring that out for themselves.

Doesn't that very line of thinking imply the awareness of the ability to be violent and therefore make him violent by nature?

No, violence is an action, not an awareness, or even a desire. You can be nonviolent will thinking about violence, hell I'd argue you have to be aware of the potential for an action to due harm to be violent, and especially nonviolent. Stepping on a slug you don't notice isn't violent, seeing a slug and running over to stomp on it to make sure its dead is. Result is the same to the slug, the violence of the act is through the perpetrator.

Erik might have failed at reprogramming himself for non-violence, as evidenced by the fact that he essentially killed one or both of the two Rachels when he assisted Ax in rejoining him

I don't know, that's a whole philosophy of life of thing in there: Cells are alive, when a sperm and egg merge, you don't really consider either or both to be dead, but they even though neither exists, what they make is also still alive as the zygote.
I think him doing this is violation of his programming as originally explained due to continuity errors by the author, not him reprogramming poorly

[TheWolfEmperor]

Stepping on a slug you don't notice isn't violent, seeing a slug and running over to stomp on it to make sure its dead is. Result is the same to the slug, the violence of the act is through the perpetrator.

Except that in this instance Erik deliberately set out to kill the slugs. Unless you're proposing that he was only planning to use as much violence as necessary without killing the Yeerks or their hosts and that the first instance of killing was his only choice in that moment.

[RYTX]

No, I'm saying that you can't be violent without intent. The results can be the same, but if the intent is different it's not violence.

But you can think about being murder and pillaging as much as you want, that doesn't make you violent. Erek was not violent, regardless of how much he may have wanted to kill Yeerks, Howlers or whatever, because he could not do anything to hurt them willfully. But had someone actually made good on the idea of using his body to bludgeon someone, that's not him being violent.

[Tim Bruening]

What do we know? Erik and a small group of Chee recruited the Animorphs to retrieve a Pemalite Crystal from the Yeerks in order to reprogram the Chee with violent capabilities.

Problem: If the Pemalites were a pacifist race and programmed the Chee to be equally non-violent, why would Erik ever get it into his head to program himself to become violent? Doesn't that very line of thinking imply the awareness of the ability to be violent and therefore make him violent by nature?

Conjecture: The Pemalites have always been aware of violence as they would have frequently encountered or observed other violent races in their travels. They wanted the Chee to be aware of violence as well. The Chee, having witnessed the savage and violent deaths of their masters now have it in their programming that to at least one species, violence was the means to an end.

Problem: A small group of Chee agreed with Erik's plan to reprogram the race for violence. If Erik was waiting outside the facility where the Pemalite Crystal was located to take the crystal from the Animorphs as soon as they escaped, how many Chee did he reprogram? Were there Chee waiting in key parts of the Yeerk Pool, ready to visit violence upon the Yeerks as soon as they were programmed? How thoroughly was their plan made and did Erik have the ability or the wherewithal to reprogram all of them? How long were Chee violent between Erik having killed all of the Yeerks in the facility and their hosts and reviving Marco and company?

Conjecture: If the other Chee were suddenly capable of violence, they might well have caused an untold amount of damage to the Yeerk invasion before their original programming was restored. In the heat of battle, Erik only reprogrammed himself so he could save the Animorphs by killing the Yeerks and their hosts at the facility.

My assumption was that Erik was the ONLY Chee who got violent!  It had never occurred to me that other Chee might have gotten violent also!