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Deeply, truly, awesomely good people

Bookworm on Dec 02 2007 at 7:57 pm | Filed under: Uplifting stories

I heard it from the Paragraph Farmer, who heard it from the PalmTree Pundit, who read this incredible story of sacrifice, nobility and generosity at CDR Salamander. It’s not going to be a big story nationwide, of course, because it’s not about being a victim, it’s about being a hero. Still, I feel honored even to share the same country with people like this.

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2 Responses to “Deeply, truly, awesomely good people”

1. on 02 Dec 2007 at 9:31 pm 1ymarsakar

   It takes good people to care more about fixing problems than blaming the people that might have caused those problems in the first place.

   Most authors say all their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, and what way was this story personal do you?

   Weber: In the most fundamental sense, almost all of my stories are about choices. I believe that the best measure of anyone’s character is to be found in the decisions they make in the face of adversity. Do they act responsibly? Do they place their own convenience or survival ahead of their moral obligations to others? Are they prepared to accept the consequences of their decisions and their actions? Are they prepared to pay the price of their decisions and their actions?

   In my books, the heroes are almost always the responsibility-takers, the ones who step up when a problem has to be confronted. They don’t usually worry about who’s responsible for the problem in the first place—or, at least, that particular concern is completely secondary to the question of how they fix what’s wrong. Quite a few of my characters are not particularly safe people to be around, for a lot of reasons, but the villains are those who don’t care about their responsibility to others, or who simply don’t see that they have one at all. I suppose you could think of it as the conflict between those who are prepared to give whatever it takes to meet a recognized need and those who are simply prepared to take whatever they can get for their own personal benefit. That’s a gross oversimplification, of course, but it’s a pretty decent thumbnail of how it works.

   Nimue Alban is pretty nearly the ultimate in responsibility-takers. Merlin is the electronic copy of the memories, beliefs and emotions of a young woman who voluntarily sacrificed her own life so that Merlin could be available to defend and restore human freedom and dignity. The allies Merlin recruits in Charis are also responsibility-takers, prepared to put their lives on the line for the things in which they believe. Indeed, the Charisians are prepared to confront the corruption of the Church and the restrictive manipulation to which they and everyone else on Safehold has been subjected without benefit of Merlin’s knowledge of what’s really happening and why. I think that actually requires even more moral courage than Nimue’s decisions do.

   Link to rest of interview

   This is David Weber, the author I was telling everyone about in Book’s Book page.

2. on 03 Dec 2007 at 7:39 am 2Webloggin - Blog Archive » Deeply, Truly, Awesomely Good People

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