Wall-e

[Zarathustra]

On this one, "saving the lives of others" ...who are also going to die, and "leaving a legacy", to people who will also die, leaving it ultimately forgotten/lost.

Well, that's the beauty and the tragedy of life. No, nothing will last forever. I think that's what Donaldson is exploring in the Last Chronicles, as I addressed here.
(Runes spoiler follows)

Spoiler

Wildwood said: “It is this. How may life endure in the Land, if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures? We were formed to stand as guardians in the Creator’s stead. Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?”

That's CW's question. The point of giving Linden the Runes: presumably so she can bring back Covenant. At least that's what she does with the possibility he enabled with the runes. So he's looking for an answer to entropy, how to stop the end of all things. At one time, Donaldson said this is what he's trying to explore with his Chronicles--a human answer to this inevitability.

I think that life is ultimately absurd. I'm not pretending that my actions have any lasting value. But, for that reason, it is even more precious than under the view that all we have to do is wait until we die for the real fun to begin. And because it is precious, and I value it, there is nothing contradictory about me choosing to sacrifice myself (if needed) to save others (even though they'll die, too), nor is it contradictory for me to want to pass on a legacy to a civilization that might be wiped out by an asteroid or the sun dying. It's no more contradictory than me valuing life in spite of its finitude, and asserting this valuation in the face of absurdity. That only makes my assertion brave, not contradictory.


I don't hold it against life that it isn't immortal and magical. It's not life's fault. If I were only going to value things that were immortal and supernaturally protected against the facts of reality, then I could value nothing. However, I refuse to let unattractive truths keep me from acknowledging the beauty while it lasts.

Also, all rights depend upon authority granting them - and claiming them in case of dispute requires appeal to authority.

Might makes right. Authority only comes from power. Rights are bargained; they are insisted upon. And when they are not given, no god ever helps out with that. Only a gun procures them.

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922

This is not the basis of democracy. God didn't write the Constitution, nor did he fight the Revolutionary war. Just because someone wrote some words on a piece of parchment doesn't mean that our democracy is based upon--or preserved--by these words. It is the actions of men which created and continue to sustain this democracy. If God wants to step in and help, more power to him. But let's not diminish the deaths of all those men who went into the ground in order that we might be free. That kind of talk only exacerbates the absurdity and futility we are all fighting against, to forget their irreplaceable contribution to our current life of liberty, and substitute instead a dogma referenced in an otherwise brilliant piece of writing.

[dANdeLION]

Holy Spoilers, Batman! I just heard Wall-e is a robot!