Angel Season 5: Working Within the System (early access)
The moral case for trying to build a system that works for everyone, or at least as many people as possible without it breaking down.
We all live in some kind of system.
You're literally born into one, which is what you call a family. They existed before you and have ideas about you and themselves, not to mention the people around you. For a large part of your life, they control who you know, the people you meet and what you do with your time. You go where they want you to go, do what they want you to do. This is the system you live in and hopefully it functions well enough that you get along in it. If it doesn't work well, that can cause all kinds of problems. Not just for you but for the people in your family. Mainly because your family members have their own system in which they live. Not just the family you exist within, but as they grow up they learn to create systems of their own, through things like friendship and relationships. Beyond that though, is everyone else who exist within your town, your state, your country and ultimately the world. There are systems everywhere around you, some of which you're not even aware exist until you get old enough to learn about them. It's simply not possible to live outside the system. So you have to learn to live within it, but is that a good idea?
Previously in this space, we've looked at the idea of leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult, what it takes to learn to make adult decisions and how that type of thinking can create the opportunity for you to become a parent. More recently we've looked at the idea that you want to give that child a world which is better than the one you grew up in. To function in a world that isn't as harsh and cruel, maybe even one that you don't have to feel things like that anymore. In order to do that though, there has to be some kind of system in place. A system that allows you to get the basic things you need but also one that you can stand to live within. If you can't stand to live in it, how do you expect you or anyone else around you to live in it too? They could simply choose to go without it. So you have to believe in the system as it exists. Can you?
“You really think you can solve the problem? Come into Wolfram and Hart and make everything right? Turn night into glorious day you pathetic little fairy. You're minuscule, a dust moat on the shelf of that great institution. You think I'm just a trigger happy jerk who follows orders but I am something you will never be. I'm pure, I believe in evil. You, your friends, you're conflicted, you're confused, we're not. That's why you're going to lose, because we possess the most powerful thing in the world... conviction.”
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