And once again, Spike is considered a hero...

Originally posted by Khaych
That is true I suppose. There is no guarantee Spike would have been de-triggered without the conspiracy, but of course there is no guarantee they would not have found another way.

No one ever achieves success without taking a gamble. Playing it safe is very ineffective in life as a general rule. While it may seem that gambling with the future of the world is wrong, I would suggest that being unable to risk anything leaves you highly vulnerable in and of itself. This concept is pretty much standard doctrine in the business world for instance. Companies that are unwilling to gamble eventually go out of business. IBM was in this position until they adopted a recently new risk-taking philosophy.

The question is wether or not keeping Spike was a good gamble. That's hard to say really. But I know where I'd put my money. I'd put it on the one who made bets that payed off. It could be because they play the odds well. It could be because they are lucky. Regardless of which of those played the stronger role, success is a powerful message. The quality of her choice became manifest the moment it proved to be the right one 🙂

*edited for spelling corrections*
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Okay, so you and I are walking down the same street. A complete stranger walks up and hands me a gun. He says it might be loaded or it might not, but he'll give me fifty thousand dollars if I point it at your head and pull the trigger. I do so. It's not loaded. You don't die. I walk away 50 grand richer.

Did I make the right decision? You wouldn't be mad that I gambled with your life? Ofcourse that wouldn't be right and you'd have every reason to beat me horribly about the head and body, never mind be 'mad'. What right do I have to gamble your life?

Buffy's choice was never proved to be the right one. She gambled with the lives of herself, Dawn, Xander, Anya, Giles, the SiTs, and every other person on the planet. She didn't have the right to put everyones lives in danger, she's the Slayer not God. Were Giles and Wood wrong? Yes. Was Buffy so incredibly, stupidly, moronically wrong that it boogles the mind? YES!
 
In your Analogy, you'd have to include something else to make it fit 🙂

Let's say that the gun has 2 chambers. The bullet is in one of those chambers. Someone tells you that you have to fire the gun at 2 different people - first at a friend, and then at Adolf Hitler.

Now you have a choice. If the bullet is in the first chamber then you have needlessly killed a friend, and gained nothing. In fact, by killing your friend and colaborator you have lost a valuable ally in the fight vs oppression. However, if the bullet is in the second chamber, your friend will be alive, though probably very very mad at you, but HITLER will be dead. If I had the gun, and the responsibility of millions of lives on my shoulders, I would pull that trigger.

The problem with your analogy is that it matches 50000 dollars against a human life. That risk is very easy to critisize. This was hardly the case in the show. Buffy was matching increased chances of success vs increased chances of failure. If Spike was used against her, then it would be even harder to defeat the first. However, if Spike worked with her, her chances were much better. That risk at the surface seems to be a zero-sum gamble, meaning the increased payoff matches the increased risk. However, if you assume that the scoobies need everything they have got to defeat The First, then the consequences are moot. They need everything going their way to defeat The First, and thus have to take risks to get up to that level. Any compromise position will leave them powerless. They will need Willow's magic despite the risks. They will need Xander to fight, despite being human and frail. They will need Wood despite his anymosity towards Spike. They will need Dawn to fight even, despite how vulnerable she is. And they will need Spike. If we start eliminating the risks we will end up with no one fighting, and at that point you have almost certain victory for The First.

The cliche is: Risk nothing, Gain nothing. It has always been the balance of the risks that make the difference. Which risk to take, and when to take it. People who don't take risks fail in every endeavor.

Despite all this I will concede that Giles' risk (the loss of an effective and powerful fighter) may well have proved to be the right one to take. Strangely, it was the combination of these two risks that produced the favourable result. So in that sense, neither one was ever proved to be correct or incorrect. The combination of the two risks chaotically produced the best advantage. It's difficult to argue with fate.
 
Originally posted by Khaych
Despite all this I will concede that Giles' risk (the loss of an effective and powerful fighter) may well have proved to be the right one to take. Strangely, it was the combination of these two risks that produced the favourable result. So in that sense, neither one was ever proved to be correct or incorrect. The combination of the two risks chaotically produced the best advantage. It's difficult to argue with fate.
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In your conclusion, you conceed that a lot of messy factors may have contributed to a partialy successful outcome. I thnk this serves as an example that life cannot always be watered down to a simple zero-sum game with known risks and rewards. More over, I think it's needlessly dangerous to do so. The people you kill in making your gamble to protect the "greater good" will not be comforted by the fact that they were only little "numbers" or "factors" in your calculation.

Even more importantly: once you start viewing people as just "numbers" or "factors", it becomes increasingly easy to justify dubious actions in the name of the "greater good".
 
Hmm well a good analogy on this whole Spike thing would probably be that say:

A cougar is chasing it's prey, it kills them and it feeds from them. It continues doing this for a long time when suddenly one day it transforms into one of them, should they forgive the cougar when it now is one of them?
 
Originally posted by Khaych
In your Analogy, you'd have to include something else to make it fit 🙂

Let's say that the gun has 2 chambers. The bullet is in one of those chambers. Someone tells you that you have to fire the gun at 2 different people - first at a friend, and then at Adolf Hitler.

Now you have a choice. If the bullet is in the first chamber then you have needlessly killed a friend, and gained nothing. In fact, by killing your friend and colaborator you have lost a valuable ally in the fight vs oppression. However, if the bullet is in the second chamber, your friend will be alive, though probably very very mad at you, but HITLER will be dead. If I had the gun, and the responsibility of millions of lives on my shoulders, I would pull that trigger.

The problem with your analogy is that it matches 50000 dollars against a human life. That risk is very easy to critisize. This was hardly the case in the show. Buffy was matching increased chances of success vs increased chances of failure. If Spike was used against her, then it would be even harder to defeat the first. However, if Spike worked with her, her chances were much better. That risk at the surface seems to be a zero-sum gamble, meaning the increased payoff matches the increased risk. However, if you assume that the scoobies need everything they have got to defeat The First, then the consequences are moot. They need everything going their way to defeat The First, and thus have to take risks to get up to that level. Any compromise position will leave them powerless. They will need Willow's magic despite the risks. They will need Xander to fight, despite being human and frail. They will need Wood despite his anymosity towards Spike. They will need Dawn to fight even, despite how vulnerable she is. And they will need Spike. If we start eliminating the risks we will end up with no one fighting, and at that point you have almost certain victory for The First.

The cliche is: Risk nothing, Gain nothing. It has always been the balance of the risks that make the difference. Which risk to take, and when to take it. People who don't take risks fail in every endeavor.

Despite all this I will concede that Giles' risk (the loss of an effective and powerful fighter) may well have proved to be the right one to take. Strangely, it was the combination of these two risks that produced the favourable result. So in that sense, neither one was ever proved to be correct or incorrect. The combination of the two risks chaotically produced the best advantage. It's difficult to argue with fate.
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First of all, remind me to never be your friend if Hitler walks into the room.

Second, never gamble with what isn't yours.

Third, the First is immaterial. A good fighter means slightly more than nothing in a fight against it. A very solid, very capable and very dangerous Spike in the midst of the SiTs does mean a whole lot however. If he was triggered and killed them, they lose. Game over. Makes it seem like a really bad gamble to me.

Fourth, 'risk nothing, gain nothing'? Okay, maybe. But, if you risk everything for very little gain, and lose, than you're screwed and the world ends. There is such a thing as an exceptable risk. Keeping Spike locked up until he was cured would have been an acceptable risk. Letting him walk around with the trigger still in his head wasn't. The world is not an exceptable thing to risk for any one person and Buffy did risk it for Spike, despite the fact that she had no right to do so.
 
Originally posted by Happy
Second, never gamble with what isn't yours.
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So it's not done to gamble with something that isn't yours, but it is no problem to sacrifice something that isn't yours? 🙂

And the solution is reasonably simple. If Wood and Giles had gotten their way, Spike would now be dead, Buffy would have kicked out both Wood and Giles, and very likely have suffered a mental breakdown. Now Buffy got her way, and Spike, Wood and Giles are still all in the game. I'd say that makes Buffy the winning party here.
 
No. The "good guys" as a whole, won in the sense that Spike no longer has a trigger. On the other hand, Buffy now mistrusts Wood and Giles. I'm sure Spike doesn't trust Wood, and he won't trust Giles if Spike knows or finds out he was involved. Actually--Spike's pretty weird, he might not hold a grudge against Giles.

Anyway, so we've got all this mistrust. And mistrust, uncertainty and doubt make The First's job easier. So it won something from all of this too, even if it did lose the trigger. And just because it lost the trigger doesn't mean it won't be able to find some other way to influence Spike or the others.
 
I don't think Spike holds a grudge against Wood either, he is just annoyed that Wood wanted 'vengeance' for something he really didn't do (If you get really technical that is).

And won't hold a grudge against Giles either because Giles acted in their best interest, and maybe even had in mind that he would be free of is trigger - and if not then at least the threat would be removed. I do believe the first part better than the second because for Wood to kill Spike...Well it is unlikely, he did at start use his modified knuckledusters and stuff but Spike was drawn into a dream of his past then and wasn't concious in the real world.
 
I think it's hard to say what Spike will hold as a real grudge (as opposed to just making snide and insulting remarks) against the people involved, because he was sooo angry (and rightly so) the last time we saw him. He'll have to cool down and sort things into Spike-logic before we see where he's going with all of this.

What I'm really concerned about at the moment is the Buffy/Giles relationship. Communication is definitely not happening, and that's a very bad thing, especially at this point.
 
It's so great to be able to talk Buffy and have contrasting views for once instead of friends who listen blankly but don't really watch the show. 😉

Just wanted to interject with that. I value differing opinions highly, and that's the whole reason we're having discussion I suppose. Thank god for Buffy fans. 🙂

Cheers,
 
Originally posted by Leshy
So let's say she does kill everyone who becomes a threat at any point. Who would have been dead by now?

Xander - killed off when he was a hyena guy
Willow - killed off when she became an evil witch
Giles - killed off when he became a demon
Angel - killed off when he lost his soul
Spike - killed off pretty much whenever
Dawn - killed off to prevent Glory from using her
Anya - killed off when she was killing frat boys
Oz - killed when he became a werewolf

The show and her circle of friends would be running quite thin rather fast, don't you think? 🙂
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you are smart!
 
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