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Date Posted: 23:23:31 10/08/05 Sat
Author: BrianWilly
Subject: Re: His actions are "evidence to the contrary"
In reply to: OnM 's message, "Re: His actions are "evidence to the contrary"" on 15:27:16 10/08/05 Sat

OnM: Some character in the movie (Zoe? Wash?) mentioned that history gets altered to suit the needs of the rulers, or words to that effect. It is one thing to accept what your leaders tell you is real, and act accordingly to preserve their idea of a "Perfect Society". It is another thing to see that lie revealed incontrovertably.

It was Mal who said that, actually;)

KdS: He's willing to do things that he believes are morally wrong because he sees them as necessary to the success of the Alliance's work. I don't believe he'd see the Miranda disaster as much more than an unfortunate mistake.

Although the Operative gives the impression of being a very civil, intelligent, informed man set in his beliefs, I do not actually think he is someone who has ever been party to much of the Alliance's actual doings and motivations. A very telling line of his states that "It is not [his] place to know" when Mal asks him if he even knows why the Alliance is telling him to kill River at all costs.

The Alliance shows the Operative what he needs to know in order to carry out his missions, nothing more. My impression is that he has been "schooled" much in the same way that the children in River's introductory dream were schooled: Very, very selectively. Shown all the good, beneficiary aspects of Alliance control, and none of the bad...or, if shown the bad, is made to believe that it was the sinful, unenlightened border planet Independents who have made it so. I suspect that most residents of the Core planets share more or less the same attitude, simply due to their upbringing. Recall that Inara was sympathetic to the Alliance before she traveled with Serenity, and that Simon certainly had no qualms with his life before his found out his sister was being lab-ratted.

For him to slaughter innocents as he does, the Operative's belief in the Alliance would have to be many times that of ordinary citizens like Simon and Inara...in other words: much more sheltered, and much blinder. In my opinion, the fact that his faith was blind was what made all the difference, made him more susceptible to a crisis of morality when faced with the sort of irrefutable evidence that he was faced with. Why so, you may ask;)? Because he is also intelligent. For all his loyalty, he is not a naive dupe. He does not use his faith as an excuse for his actions in the way that religious zealots usually do, because he does not have to. He fully believes through empirical evidence -- albiet only the evidence that the Alliance has allowed him to see -- that his sins will lead to paradise in the end. As an educated, intelligent man, he has arrived at this conclusion through logic. So the Operative is a man with a few contradictions; driven both by blind faith and empirical reasoning.

So what happens when one of those aspects is utterly and irrefutably destroyed? Remember, it's not just that the Alliance made an "unfortunate mistake" and unleashed untold evils across the universe...they also lied about it. They lied to their own people about it, and they lied to him. They tried to cover it up, and they used him to do so. His heart may side with the Alliance, but for the first time his mind knows it to be wrong. In the end, he has to rely on his mind.

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