2013-01-18
Original: 2013-01-18 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Child: Daddy, the villains' henchmen in movies are always robots!
Panel 2:
Father: That's because, as a civilization, we're no longer comfortable with killing soldiers on the basis of nationality.
Panel 3:
Father: But although we recognize that patriotism is often the handmaiden of dehumanization, we haven't yet given up the notion of Manichaean struggle between evil and good.
Panel 4:
Father: To mentally sustain the contradiction we insist that evil is exceptional and localized in a small number of humans. This allows us to believe evil is a separate type of mind, and not a facet of all minds.
Panel 5:
Father: In drama, the avatar of this psychological frailty is the lone villain with an army of automata, fighting humans who under no conditions could ever be like the machines.
Panel 6 (the child, frowning):
(no dialogue)
Panel 7:
Child: Sorry, let me try that again: Can I have a toy robot for my birthday?
Panel 8:
Father: Only if you accept the ethical implications!
Votey:
A grinning face says: Monster!
Child: Daddy, the villains' henchmen in movies are always robots!
Panel 2:
Father: That's because, as a civilization, we're no longer comfortable with killing soldiers on the basis of nationality.
Panel 3:
Father: But although we recognize that patriotism is often the handmaiden of dehumanization, we haven't yet given up the notion of Manichaean struggle between evil and good.
Panel 4:
Father: To mentally sustain the contradiction we insist that evil is exceptional and localized in a small number of humans. This allows us to believe evil is a separate type of mind, and not a facet of all minds.
Panel 5:
Father: In drama, the avatar of this psychological frailty is the lone villain with an army of automata, fighting humans who under no conditions could ever be like the machines.
Panel 6 (the child, frowning):
(no dialogue)
Panel 7:
Child: Sorry, let me try that again: Can I have a toy robot for my birthday?
Panel 8:
Father: Only if you accept the ethical implications!
Votey:
A grinning face says: Monster!
Alt text
An eight-panel comic. A small child sits beside her bald, mustachioed father (in a yellow shirt and glasses) watching something. Child: "Daddy, the villains' henchmen in movies are always robots!" The father launches into an escalating monologue across several panels, his face shown in increasingly extreme close-up: he explains that civilizations are no longer comfortable killing soldiers by nationality, yet still cling to a Manichaean good-vs-evil framework; to sustain that contradiction we insist evil is exceptional and localized in a few humans rather than a facet of all minds; and that the lone villain commanding an army of automata is the dramatic avatar of that frailty. The child looks increasingly annoyed. Child: "Sorry, let me try that again: Can I have a toy robot for my birthday?" Father, still intense: "Only if you accept the ethical implications!" Votey aftercomic: a crude, sketchy grinning cartoon face beside a robot, with a speech bubble reading "Monster!"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.