Teddy: Innocent Man or Monster?

[VictorianFlorist]

Teddy is a loyal worker. He does what he’s told. He’s only following orders. We do not have enough information to judge his morality, all we have is his personal, professional reports on progress with Portencia and Aether’s first-hand, and possibly biased, account. We have no idea who Teddy really is and what KS may have on him

If he’s doing this without a shread of doubt in regard to the morality of the experiments. He is a heartless monster and a great scientist.

If he is with “incentive”, he has questioned the morality of the experiments and KS is threatening his livelihood, his family, or even his life.

[ArcChild]

I personally cannot bring myself to judge Teddy’s degree of morality with so little information as well as so many holes in the information we have recieved. There is not enough information from enough sources to set up a legitimate and sound scenario to judge this man’s character off of.

[ArcChild]

So in other words, innocent until enough sound evidence is provided to prove him guilty in the court of morality. Imo.

[Revenir]

Okay, so, here is the transcription had by a few of us in a far away land:

Revenir - Today at 10:07 PM
If you want to justify Teddy
Find a way to compare him to Ted from Bill and Ted

Kingsington - Today at 10:07 PM
Have never watched that

Revenir - Today at 10:07 PM
A fool’s errand, then
Teddy is doomed
Doomed to be hated
5eva

Kingsington - Today at 10:08 PM
Sucks to be him, having only me as the only one who believes in his goodness

Chordie - Today at 10:08 PM
Teddy = Waylon Park

Kingsington - Today at 10:09 PM
I mean I think that’s more Whistler

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:09 PM
Well, his interests has a Intellectual curiousity behind them. So I can validate the means as long as the results were intellectually satisfying.

Chordie - Today at 10:09 PM
oh tru

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:09 PM
And intellectually valuable.

Revenir - Today at 10:09 PM
Uhhhh that’s a slippery slope my dude

Kingsington - Today at 10:09 PM
The dark side of Thornmouth, hey Victorian?

Revenir - Today at 10:10 PM
Lots of scientific results have come from horrific, unethical experiments

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:10 PM
A lot of scientific breakthroughs as well.

Revenir - Today at 10:10 PM
I don’t think that justifies the means though
Like the people who did the tuskegee syphilis experiment were still garbage people

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:11 PM
That brings us to a morality argument.

Kingsington - Today at 10:11 PM
Yes please, let’s have one

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:11 PM
If a few die to protect the lives of many, is that a good thing?

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:16 PM
But as I was saying, Teddy was doing what his company instructed him to do and he was doing it for knowledge on adepts and their powers. We have no bearing on what kind of person he really was, whether he was reluctant or not to conduct his experiments. We can only judge his work ethic. And through the evidence he is a loyal worker, he values knowledge and will follow the interests of his company. We cannot judge him morally unless we know his willingness to conduct the aforementioned experiments.

Kingsington - Today at 10:18 PM
It seems like over time he’s become more amoral as he’s been forced to reconcile the terrible things he’s done. It’s something a person can come back from though. So I think that Teddy could potentially be redeemed to some degree if we manage to dismantle KS.

Revenir - Today at 10:18 PM
I’ve nearly approached Godwin’s law with this

ArcChild - Today at 10:19 PM
I would hire Teddy

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:20 PM
His loyalty would be very valuable.

ArcChild - Today at 10:21 PM
But I mean, was it worse than Hitler?
(I got you rev)

Revenir - Today at 10:21 PM
But really, that’s a silly argument. You can judge anyone for their actions. Just because someone does it under the guise of their job or their duty doesn’t mean it’s not something they did. I’m gonna go full Godwin on this, but like Germany in WWII, there were soldiers who did horrific things. There were scientists who did horrific experiments. And yes, they did it for their country, but that doesn’t excuse them. They have free will and they chose to do it, even knowing the obvious truth that killing people and experimenting on them was an evil thing to do.
Like I couldn’t go and murder someone and say because my job told me to do it, that it’s ok. I’m still going to jail. Does that make sense?

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:25 PM
But with Nazi Germany it was different. You disobey you could be going into the same camp you were guarding or join the prisoners in the gas chambers. If Teddy is a high level researcher then he has seen what happens when you disobey, when you go against the company. He could end up with his whole life turned upside down. So yea, if you murder for a living you’ll go to jail, but is jail worse than your boss shooting you?

Kingsington - Today at 10:25 PM
A lot of those people had families that would have been in danger if they hadn’t complied. It’s difficult to indict a group of people when each person’s extenuating circumstances are different.
Applying this to Teddy, then. We don’t know how he first got involved with KS. Maybe there is someone out there that Teddy’s trying to protect through his compliance.

Chordie - Today at 10:26 PM
VictorianFlorist “Did I just hear Mister Park say he wanted to volunteer for the Morphogenic Engine program? I believe I did”

Totally agree with this. No sense in throwing your own life away if you don’t stand to change anything

ArcChild - Today at 10:27 PM
See I couldn’t murder someone over someone telling me to do it, it’s risk versus reward (this sounds really bad tbh). The risk (or the negative) is I’m taking someone’s life, now that’s an infinitely large negative regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. But what’s my positive, am I doing it to secure my life and ones I loved, or am I doing it to acquire knowledge that may save thousands of people. I don’t think it’s correct to judge someone on their actions until you know the situation, their moral standards, or the risk and reward for the situation

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:27 PM
Look at us, mounties having an intestive moral debate.

Revenir - Today at 10:28 PM
I mean, that’s true to an extent, but you also have to remember that there’s more to disobedience then spitting in the face of your supervisor and saying you’re done.

Chordie - Today at 10:28 PM
That’s the point of whistleblowing, is it not?

Revenir - Today at 10:30 PM
Teddy, for example, didn’t have to “recruit” Portencia and Aether. We know from his logs that he actively found Portencia. He could have chosen to ignore her existence and pretend that he’d never found her. Then she would still be at home and her family would still be alive. He went beyond the call of duty when it comes to KS and, if he was truly a good person, he wouldn’t have done it. If you’re being threatened by someone, why would you ever do more than you’re asked for?

Chordie - Today at 10:30 PM
That’s a fair point Revenir

Kingsington - Today at 10:30 PM
Okay, I’ll concede that

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:31 PM
I did not know he sought Portencia on his own.
That makes him seem a little less, morally good.

ArcChild - Today at 10:31 PM
But then you get into the argument of what the actual risk was, what were the conditions?
We as he required to produce results?

Kingsington - Today at 10:32 PM
Portentia might still be alive, if Teddy hadn’t found her. However, he might have just tried to get her himself before some other KS employee discovered her for themselves. He couldn’t have forseen that they would kill her.

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:32 PM
But all we know is that he sought her on his own. Details are not there.

ArcChild - Today at 10:33 PM
Exactly, we can’t make any judgements of his character without actual details. All of this is just speculation and accusing a man of something in a situation we can’t and don’t understand

Revenir - Today at 10:33 PM
That doesn’t make any sense. If another KS employee found her, the result would have been the same. At the very least, if he’d left her alone, she would have had more time free. Also, they didn’t kill her.

Leigha - Today at 10:35 PM
Here’s my (extremely Balimoran) pov on Teddy. I don’t care. He’s a means to an end. There are innocent people losing their lives and he’s partially responsible for enormous amounts of suffering. If we can use whatever tiny bits of humanity he has left in him, we will. If not, so be it. I don’t care why he does what he does, he does it. And one way or another, it’s going to stop.

Kingsington - Today at 10:35 PM
Revenir Sorry, I meant “mentally destroy”

Revenir - Today at 10:37 PM
Leigha I agree to an extent, but this wouldn’t be a very good argument about morality if we left it at that

Leigha - Today at 10:38 PM
I’m not a terribly moral person, though. I’m a pragmatist. I don’t avoid the seven deadly sins because they’re sins. I avoid them because they’re deadly.

Revenir - Today at 10:38 PM
At any rate, I think I’ll leave it at this. I’m skeptical of attempts to redeem Teddy, but if you guys want to go full Team Teddy, by all means.

Kingsington - Today at 10:39 PM
The world’s a dark enough place without condemning people we barely know

ArcChild - Today at 10:39 PM
But how can we have a debate on morality of an individual in a situation that we do not understand? We have very few details and all I see is a lot of speculation coming out of everyone in most of their points…

Revenir - Today at 10:40 PM
We have the man’s logs, Arcs. And we have the direct testimony of Aether.

Leigha - Today at 10:40 PM
Oh no, I’m not saying go in there guns a blazin’, far, far from it. I’m saying I have absolutely no qualms about using and manipulating him, if we get the opportunity.

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:40 PM
Well Morality is subjective and taught.

I’m not full team Teddy, I’m just saying we don’t know the exact circumstances of his employment, and therefore cannot judge his morals.

Kingsington - Today at 10:42 PM
To be honest I wasn’t full Team Teddy until Revenir opposed it

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:42 PM
Someone likes an argument.

Kingsington - Today at 10:42 PM
A bit of Devil’s Advocate, yes

ArcChild - Today at 10:43 PM
When working for a company, scientific logs are not private, anyone above you has access to them and it would be rather stupid to put in anything that didn’t regard your research in there. As for aethers testimony, he was a patient, he also would be lacking a lot of information on the situation that teddy has on his hands

Kingsington - Today at 10:43 PM
Also, I’m a sucker for a redemption story. That’s why I originally thought he might be an okay guy

Leigha - Today at 10:43 PM
Okay, if we’re going to talk about morality, try this. Say he just abducted one of us, someone we know, someone we care about, say, Brendon. And put him in the chair. Repeatedly. Because he “has to”. How do you feel about him now.

ArcChild - Today at 10:43 PM
What’s his situation, what is driving him?

Kingsington - Today at 10:43 PM
Well, if it’s someone we care about, it can’t be Brendon

ArcChild - Today at 10:43 PM
(sorry Brendon)

Leigha - Today at 10:43 PM
Hahahahaa
I knew I shouldn’t have used him as an example.

Revenir - Today at 10:44 PM
Rip Bren

Kingsington - Today at 10:44 PM
Hopefully he doesn’t read this

ArcChild - Today at 10:44 PM
I need to be able to stand in someone’s shoes before I even think about judging their character, with exceptions of course.

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:45 PM
Most would be up in Arms. I see a man trying to gather data for his company, but I also see a friend who I am concerned about. I’m torn. But in the end we still don’t know what KS has on Teddy, if there is anything.
If there’s nothing, he’s a heartless monster.

ArcChild - Today at 10:45 PM
Or a very good scientist
Depends on how you look at it

Kingsington - Today at 10:46 PM
Arc, you’re scaring me

ArcChild - Today at 10:46 PM
#iamteddy

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:46 PM
That’s fair, Arc. I should have said that.

If there is something KS uses as, incentive, then he is a scared man being forced to do horrible things to protect himself, his wellbeing, his family, etc.

Kingsington - Today at 10:48 PM
I try to hate as little on the mooks as possible, as a general rule. Not enough is known of Teddy, period. However, we do know there’s a Big Bad out there that’s making all of this stuff possible. They’re the biggest to blame, and they’re who need to be targeted first. Afterwards, we can assign blame to the rest of KS.

ArcChild - Today at 10:49 PM
You can’t judge a man if you can’t stand in his shoes (I will keep repeating things like this until the end because this is something I firmly believe in)

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:50 PM
Well said Arc, well said.

Revenir - Today at 10:50 PM
I wouldn’t call Teddy a mook. He has nearly the highest privilege level, from what Whistler said.
He’s like that annoying boss you face before the final boss. Like Chernabog before Ansem

Kingsington - Today at 10:51 PM
I think that there’s a point where you have to judge a man without being able to stand in his shoes. That’s what our justice systems do all the time

ArcChild - Today at 10:51 PM
But the information from Whistler is potentially biased as well as just heresay evidence

Kingsington - Today at 10:51 PM
Again, Godwin’s law, but I think it’s safe to judge Hitler without having actually committed a genocide yourself

Revenir - Today at 10:52 PM
Arc, Whistler told us what 117-2 means, there’s really no way for that to be heresay.
117 is the ID number, and 2 is the privilege level.

Kingsington - Today at 10:52 PM
actually, that’s brings up something I was just curious about

Kingsington - Today at 10:53 PM
does that mean there are only like 3 levels
or does it count down towards 1

ArcChild - Today at 10:53 PM
Or does it count up to x

VictorianFlorist - Today at 10:53 PM
Is that scale being 1-10. 1 being highest, and 10 begin lowest, or the other way round?

[Kingsington]

Master-Class Dream Lord. You have earned this title well.

[Revenir]

Btw, because this seems relevant, here’s the stuff we learned from Whistler:

“Are the names Kendrick or Theodore Fallon familiar to you?
Fallon is who I report to. It’s who we all report to. I remember Kendrick. The name. Feels like we were close. Maybe we worked together? Are you investigation Fallon?”

“Does 117-2 sound familiar?
That’s a security designation within the company. The first is the employee number, and the second number is security clearance level. This would belong to someone pretty high up. Have you been investigating someone inside? How?”

Also, links to Teddy’s logs:
Wanderer
Portencia
Aether
Lachmann
Climber

And the transcriptions of Aether’s livestream and the KS video with Aether’s edits:
Livestream
KS video

[Kingsington]

Thanks, Revenir! Hopefully we get some lively debate out of this.

[Revenir]

I hope so! I think that there are some serious questions this raises and, although I pretty obviously lean to one side, you guys raised some extremely valid points.

For the sake of argument, for people wanting to enter the debate, I thought some questions might be useful for people to answer:

• Is scientific research that is obtained through monstrous means still valid? Is it justified?
• Does KS’s ability to produce results justify their actions? If kidnapping the adepts made no difference to their research, would that change the way you feel about them?
• Can we judge Teddy for his actions without knowing the full extent of his circumstances (for instance, the possibility of him being blackmailed by KS)?
• Is kidnapping/torturing/murdering others justified if you are being blackmailed?
• Does Teddy actively seeking out adepts (and choosing not to ignore the ones he finds), make him immoral?
• If Teddy were to abduct someone close to you, would you feel differently about your answer? why or why not?
• A la the Balimoran point of view, does any of this even matter? Should we even care what happens to Teddy as long as we obtain what we want?

This is your assignment today for Philosomancy 112. The assignment is worth 10 points, so please be sure to cite your reasons and clearly explain them.

[Nomad]

Scientific research obtained through monstrous means are monstrous. Period. Congratulations, you have results. You have also horribly scarred your soul beyond comprehension. There is a difference between choosing to die for the good of many and being tortured and murdered unwillingly. A very big difference, might I add. “Collateral damage” is still damage, no matter how you twist it.

Kidnapping adepts is kidnapping adepts. Whether results were achieved or not, you’re breaking the law, and infringing on their civil liberties. I already hate their methods, whether they work or not matters little, they need to be stopped.

Torture, murder, and kidnapping are not acceptable no matter what. If someone is going to die regardless, I would rather the body count be lower. I’m very sorry if this offends anyone, but if it was the choice between my own mother and thirty strangers, I’ll choke on my tears and pray to my mother for forgiveness. But I’ll know I did the right thing.

Seeking them out by itself isn’t immoral, neither is necessarily not ignoring them. The moment actions are taken to have them kidnapped instead of asked to volunteer, it becomes immoral. Period.

Who Teddy abducts is of little consequence. Yes, I would feel more personally invested. However that doesn’t make the action inherently worse, and if I thought so, it’s a fairly slippery slope towards all methods of divisiveness. You could argue against that, but it’s a very group based mentality. An Us or Them type deal.

We should care about what happens to Teddy. Assuming we’re the ones who will bring them all to justice, we will be their judge and jury. Their punishment or lack thereof matters. It’s how we prevent history from repeating itself. Imagine arresting a murderer and saying that you don’t care what happens to him, so you let him walk right out. Are you going to ask why all these people are dying afterwards?

Hot da n I love a good rant.

[Nomad]

At this point I’m just trying to determine how guilty he is. The man isn’t innocent. A blind man could see that. He’s taken immoral steps at every turn and broken very real, very severe laws, that even the federal government tries to toe the line with. Realistically, the man has likely broken international law. Now whether or not you claim be was forced, the line must be drawn somewhere. He helped FRACTURE the mind of a young girl. Think about that for a second. FRACTURED IT. If there’s incentive KS has on him, it better be da n good or I’m going to make sure whatever punishment we decide on would make even the ancient Teutons squeamish.

[Leigha]

I want to be clear, when I said I don’t care, I meant I don’t care if what he’s doing is moral or not. (It’s not). What I care about is not only all the innocent people whose lives have already been destroyed, but all those who will be hurt by whatever KS and the powers behind them have planned for the human race, for the world. One guy really doesn’t matter that much to me, especially one who has done the things Teddy has. I don’t care what his reasons are.
As for what happens to him, I don’t imagine we are going to be able to do much damage to him. KS and the big bad will likely take care of that, one way or another. I don’t think that’s in our hands.
Nazi scientists were brought to America after WW2 and given high ranking, cushy, world changing positions. One of them (Wernher von Braun) was a Director at NASA and awarded several medals. Walt Disney featured him in NASA educational films. I highly doubt there would have been anything any group of concerned citizens could have done to stop that from happening. Not saying we can’t try, just saying it’s not very likely.

[Skylad]

Could whistler and teddy be the same person?? :

Because whistler has two sets of memories competing, maybe they don’t realise that it was their staff number!
Or do you think that Teddys role makes him more lvl 1??

[Sellalellen]

Philosomancy homework after everything else that’s happened today? Who am I kidding, I can’t resist!

Regardless of the means, I consider his discoveries to still be valid. Morally wrong, yes, but valid. During the Holocaust, the Nazis preformed many horrible experiments on the Jews (morally wrong) But made many advances in medicine that likely wouldn’t have been brought about otherwise (valid science). I believe Teddy’s situation to be no different.
Although KS has made several discoveries, the end does not justify the means. What they are doing is wrong, no buts about it.
We don’t yet know enough about Teddy to condemn or pardon him. We don’t know much about his willingness to participate in the experiments. We don’t know if he sees them as wrong but participates anyway, or if he supports the treatment of the adepts 100%. It’s clear he has some compassion for them, but if he doesn’t act on that compassion soon, I dont think it’s worth much redemption-wise.
Torturing/kidnapping/murdering is wrong regardless of the circumstances.
I think that how he feels about seeking out the adepts would change how I feel about him. Yes, abducting them is wrong, but that aside, does his attitude towards it affect how we should consider it? If he is reluctant to do it but does anyway, Is that better or worse than if he enjoyed it? I cannot answer this one.
If he were to abduct someone close to me, nothing would change. His actions are still wrong, and his motivations are still in question.
Personally, I dont much care what happens to him. If justice comes crashing down on him like a hundred angry Ebenguards, then so be it. If he continues to work at KS, then so be it. I do hope he can become useful to us somehow, but we’ll simply have to wait and see.

[Nomad]

Being perfectly honest, look up the Japanese Holocaust. Far less publicized. Far more brutal in terms of torture. I think it probably fits the situation a bit better. While the scientific results are there, it doesn’t take away what was done to get them. In my eyes, the ends don’t justify the means.

I personally don’t care too much about his willingness or unwillingness to do what he has done. The fact that he’s done them is more than enough to condemn him. Whether or not he can earn the right to a second chance is entirely up to him, and it would have to be really well done.

Intent does matter, but the outcome stays the same. A repentant mass murderer is still a mass murderer. If they work to better themselves and make up for what they’ve done for the rest of their lives, maybe they could approach balancing the scales. Maybe.

You raise good points

[Nomad]

I know, don’t worry. I can understand looking at the grand scheme over one man, but I think it’s important to look at the cogs of a machine just as much as it’s important to understand the machine as a whole. We can find out a lot about how KS operates by looking at Teddy. He shows compassion, yet still does these horrible, horrible things. He doesn’t seem to be getting his mind wiped like Whistler, and he’s fairly high up in security clearance. We can learn a lot about KS as a whole from him. Infrastructure wise and ideology wise.

Maybe it’s an Ebenguard thing, but I do tend to get caught up in moral arguments fairly quickly.

[Revenir]

Hahaha, I knew a Thornmouth couldn’t resist some philosomancy

Here’s something interesting I wanted to add to this conversation:

There’s some parallels to KS’s practices with MKUltra. For those who don’t know about the project, here’s a good website The long story short, the CIA performed numerous illegal experiments on humans in order to learn about mind control that they could harness for their interrogation methods. Some of the experiments included the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and isolation, as well as various forms of torture. Although the first round of participants were volunteers, they soon started using unwilling citizens who they forced into the program.

I bring this up because KS is not the first organization to do these kinds of things. Not even in recent history. Mind control is not so different from mind erasure. It’s easy to get real nebulous with moral debates, but I think there’s something grounding about listening to the testimony of Chris DeNicola and Victim C about the harrowing ordeals they went through. For me, that’s the real turning point - there’s no justification for the things these poor people went through.

[MissEvans]

The torture and exploitation of the different is always wrong, no matter what the apparent end result is meant to be.

Teddy may have had qualms to begin with, but unless we see signs that he is an underground agent or some such double play, he has colluded and enabled harm to come to others.

Are there others involved? We don’t know, but I wonder if we’d be less mad at the one name we have currently if we knew the bigger bosses or wider employee base. We are focussing a lot of righteous anger at the only named target we have.

It takes a very rare person to stand up do being told to do wrong by an official body. Humanity has been ground down to follow orders from those in charge for a long time, and we can get very good at it.
Forgive the lack of named studies, but there have been experiments that prove, when told by someone in a white coat to keep hurting someone you can’t see, remotely, significant numbers of people will keep on with what they’ expect been told. Because white coat/suit/official.

Maybe there’s a massive compassion dump spell we can do on Teddy to get him to stop his work of his own accord?

[ArcChild]

A lot of those are good points, but my main concern is your last comment about altering his person through a spell, if it turns out he is immoral it is not our position to modify him so his morals align with ours. However, if something was taken away then there should be no issue returning it.

But we also need to understand Teddy’s situation, which we don’t have enough info on, just his experimentation under KS. If we did something to modify his morals without his consent in order to stop him, and he dies as a result, are we all okay with being the cause of murder on an individual? Is it okay for us to modify someone who isn’t as close to us to protect those closer to us?

This is just for the general argument:
Although what is going on with KS is a very immoral type of experimentation, until we can gather enough info to understand exactly what’s happening and who’s doing what, we have no right to act unless forced to. For instance now that we know aether is out, we must protect him. If we can get more information from Whistler or Aether then making judgments will become easier to make.

I also don’t excuse the experimentation because I don’t see a positive for the results, nor do a see a positive way to apply them under the control of KS, who I feel should be the main target of any and all anger and judgment. We know enough about their company practices and the results they’re producing that we can judge the moral standards of the company, which would be the case if we didn’t have Teddy to pin it on.

[MissEvans]

Poorly phrased in the urge to fix it.
I was thinking more a compassion realisation, than a change of who he is.
(Welcome to the nuanced world where reforming the “baddie” is ethically dubious.)

[ArcChild]

So just kind of show him the upper limit of compassion he’s capable of? I still feel unless we can know what kind of consequences Ted himself will face we cannot take any action unless explicitly asked. If we know he’ll be okay if he backs out because of compassion, then sure. But, if there is even a small chance of him facing consequences from our actions at with what we know, I’ll be adamantly against it.