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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37918
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37918
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Remember that all stories are moral. They deal with moral conflict, both within the individual and between individuals. Questions of what it is most effective to do to address a given problem as the matter of essays, not fiction. If fiction deals with them at all, it is to address the related moral issues.

There have always been moral questions surrounding man's conquest of nature. At what point is one presuming to play God is a common question. And if you are presuming to play God, how do you know what God wants?

Moral questions also have to do with value and with advantage. Supposing that one accepts global warming alarmism at its worst, and suppose you accept that the most radical decarbonization proposals are the only efficacious response, there are still a host of value questions to deal with, such as:

- Why should I in the middle of the continent give up my car and my fresh veggies so that you who chose to build your house on the sand don't have to move?

- It is wise to wreck our economy today to reduce carbon emissions radically when the resulting impoverishment of our economy could shut down the research that could lead to alternative sources of power or efficient means of climate control?

- What is the desirable state anyway: Maintaining the natural environment as if man did not exist? Exploiting the natural environment to ensure prosperity for all. Every man for himself and devil take the hindmost? Wealth for those with the wit to get it; charity for the rest?

A lot of these films have a pretty clear moral thread running through them. Jurassic Park is a "should we play God?" movie. The basic rhetorical trick for arguing any moral position is to infantilize and demonize those with opposing positions. You don't have to win the argument rationally if you can rob the opposition of the moral authority to speak. (See the last US election campaign, on both sides.) Thus these movies have their buffoonish villain and their noble just hero. The attempt is to associate the morality of the argument with the morality of the man; to put my position into the mouths of saints, and the opposition's position into the mouths of buffoons and demons.

Original score: 7