Re: Douchebag characters considered "Nice Guys" - example 1: Xander Ha
I haven't seen "The Dark Age" in a while. I'll have to rewatch it.
As for "Orpheus," I would attribute this to Angel/Angelus' multiple personality disorder combined with a bad drug trip. After all, if this were a literal depiction of Angel/Angelus' mindscape, then why is Angel even there? At that point, Angel's soul was still M.I.A. I would better compare this to that old cartoon cliche of the little angel over one shoulder & a little devil over the other. Angel & Angelus have equal contempt for their opposing attributes but this doesn't mean that they're not two sides of the same Liam coin.
Except that Angel didn't arrive until Willow was already doing the spell to put him back in. She hadn't completely succeeded yet, with Jasmine-Cordy blocking her, but some of it could have already been present.
Whoever said anything that the new personality was derived from somewhere else? It indeed is NOT derived from anywhere but the previous human personality.
THAT DOES NOT MEAN THE DEMON IS THE HUMAN!
The demon is born inside the corpse of the human and takes what is there to mold itself a personality; twisting everything good into evil, and making anything evil worse (if it can). The result is a demon that is a pure evil caricature of the person that inhabited the corpse before that person died.
It however does not mean, AGAIN, that the demon is the human. They are two completely different beings, with completely different personalities.
How can their personalities be "completely different" if you just admitted that a vampire's personality is solely derrived from its old human personality?
Being derived from automatically means different. If it weren't different, it wouldn't be derived from, it would simply be the same thing, not derived at all.
As for how, I've said this what, a hundred times now? It takes everything good, and twists it into evil, thus forming an evil caricature of the person that lived ones.
Naming a few blatant ones:
Angel loved his sister, killed her with glee.
Gunn's sister loved her brother, wanted to kill him with glee.
And you have multiple such events; good - evil.
Furthermore, if a vampire's personality is solely derrived from its old human personality, then what is the source of this element that seems to have its own moral agenda of making the vampire as evil as possible?
The demon. You know, the thing animates the corpse and takes over. DEMON.
What you're describing kind of sounds like an anti-conscience, which is an intriguing notion. The only reason why I'm not willing to buy it is because, whenever they talk about souls & vampires, it's always about removing or restoring the human soul. They never talk about a demon soul as something that would be desirable to be removed or even could be removed. (The demon casino owner in "Double or Nothing" thought that Angel was trying to con him by offering his soul as a wager. "Nice try, but you're a vampire. I can smell it from here.")
A demon is not a soul. The removal of the demon-spirit would be a rather bad thing; as in 'poof' - dust. The demon is what animates and holds the corpse together. Remove it, and it falls apart, dust to dust. A stake works just fine, it would be a wast of effort and a massive risk to try to magically remove demon-spirits.
(However, if I did buy the theory of a demon soul, and thus an anti-conscience, it might explain a couple things. In particular, perhaps the reason why Angel had a multiple personality disorder with Angelus
No, that isn't a multiple personality disorder, those are two entirely different beings.
while Spike didn't seem so afflicted is because Spike's soul was restored by an African cave demon that knew what he was doing. He knew enough to remove the demon soul at the same time. Meanwhile, since Angel got his soul back through a gypsy curse that doesn't even make much sense, he's stuck with an anti-conscience simultaneous with his regular human soul.)
:sighs: No.
1. If Spike had lost his demon, he wouldn't be a vampire anymore, in fact he'd go 'poof'.
2. Spike is no different after his soul, the exact same way he was no different after turning. Remember that whole thing about "twisting everything good into evil". Well, what happens if there is nothing good to twist? The worse the person before being turned, the less difference there is with the vampire afterward.
3. Removing the demon with gypsy curse, is what would make no sense. And again, it's not an anti-conscience - it's a completely different being, a demon animating a corpse. This is Angelus. They wanted to torture the thing that hurt them so, unleash their furious vengeance upon it, and make it suffer. Removing Angelus would be counter-productive. "We want to make Angelus pay! So we'll get rid of him first so he doesn't suffer at all." They might as well have dusted him. No, Angelus had to pay, so they brought Liam back. At first, it didn't quite make sense to me either. What does it do to have Liam/Angel feel guilty, if Angelus is still there and doesn't give a shit and doesn't feel anything? That was of course until I saw Orpheus. Remember how Angelus screamed in horror just watching Angel save a puppy. Imagine how horrifying and torturous the actual event must have been like! Now add friends, feelings of guilt, loved ones - or eating rats out of guilt. Angelus is indeed very much still there, conscious, and lives through everything that Angel lives through. To Angelus, every single waking moment is a year worth of psychological and physical torture. The gypsies wanted to make Angelus suffer, and boy did they ever make him suffer.
While I would agree that learned morality has a strong influence on moral behavior, I believe that there must be something innate in all of us that makes independent moral judgments. If there were not, then there would be no human concepts of good & evil. A society comprised entirely of beings without independent moral judgment would be incapable of creating any moral values at all.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever! It makes independent moral judgments, and thus it is NOT human, but only with it, can there be human concepts of good & evil, that come from something not human.
You can only have human concepts of good and evil and morality if there is nothing independent from us making those judgments. Otherwise, they would be NON-human concepts of good and evil.
And indeed, this fits with our history. If there was something in us making absolute judgments about good and evil, the differences of morals through the ages would either be non-existent, or tiny. Yet what is considered some of the greatest goods today, is considered pure evil back in the bronze age. This that are considered pure evil now, were considered right, and totally good back then.
If nothing else, I think all (sane) human beings are hardwired with the ability to judge that it is wrong to cause undue suffering to other people. Learned morality then accounts for the varying interpretations of that universal moral truth. Certain cultures approve slavery or genocide because they believe that the ones they're enslaving or killing aren't really people. Other cultures will mutiliate criminals because they believe that they deserve it.
Which shows you how completely wrong you are. Those aren't varying interpretations of a universal moral truth; those are completely different and opposing morals.
Morals simply formed because it was good for our genes. If we protect our brothers and sisters, our children and our tribe, even to the detriment of yourself, your genes (or a large number of them at least) will continue to survive onward. Those who did not have this sense of protecting or not harming others, would die sooner themselves (since they wouldn't be protected in turn) and be less desirable mates. Result; they were less likely to pass on their genes, caring for others with the same genes were much more likely to pass on our genes - caring about others became a very powerful trait in humans.
However, this is ALL human. There's nothing universal about it; and it is supposed to only work on those with the same genes. The rest you exploit and destroy. Any morals beyond "protect your genes, and destroy others' genes" is stuff we have developed as our brains grew ever larger and more complex.
However, I also watched "Surprise"/"Innocence" and I came across something surprising that I had forgotten. Remember that bespectacled henchman that was working for Spike & Drusilla? The Judge was able to burn him! He wasn't able to burn Angelus when he tried but he was able to burn another unsouled vampire. (He also threatened to burn Spike & Drusilla but they only convinced him not to because they were the ones that reassembled him.) How could all unsouled vampires be pure evil if the Judge was able to burn one but not another?
In case you hadn't noticed, the Judge does not burn good, the Judge burns human. The vampire with the glasses for example, liked books. That was the human trait that got him burned. However, what has liking books got to do with good or evil? You can like books and still enjoy slaughtering whole villages. In fact, most knowledge you can get out of books, can be used for both good and evil. And yes, glasses guy, was using the knowledge from the books to do evil. So no, nothing good inside him.
