What?!? Are you deliberately trolling here, Kendall?
No, no no. Abbigail sold her highest value waaaay too easily and as Mammon said, completely undercut the entire point of what she was doing. It's like if she had been in an egg race and had used a syringe to suck out the yolk of the egg in order to buy some running shoes that let her win the race with the "intact" egg. She's entirely missing the point. The example didn't say that she tried for years and years to find other ways across the river and finally in total desperation decided to do what was necessary. It just said that he "felt" that her only alternative was to accept Sinbad's terms. Not to walk downriver to the next bridge. Not to walk to where the river ends. Not to ask more than two neighbors.
She felt that it was her only alternative. Well, la dee da.
We're dealing with a woman who is an idiotic, psychopathic whore here. She sold herself cheaply, expected an upstanding gentleman to love her for it, and then laughed at him being unjustly beaten - the man she supposedly loved. To judge Gregory negatively for rejecting such a woman is completely incorrect.
If you want my take on this, here it is:
Slug
Abigail
Sinbad
Ivan
Gregory
Slug is at the top, for the beating - but he would switch places with Abigail if she had in fact put him up to it. The narrative is unclear on that point, but assuming she didn't she is still a very, very close second. She just does horrible things all around. Sinbad is a nihilistic whoremongering sleazebag - I'm as nonplussed as Kendall on peoples' use of the libertarian ethics here. Ivan, as themadkat pointed out, was Abbigail's friend, so he wasn't just some stranger who refused a beggar, which would be perfectly okay. (I missed that the first reading) Why did he refuse to be involved with helping a friend? We don't know. Maybe it's because Abbigail is a psycho and he knows it; but then why is he a friend? Maybe, on the other hand, he's leaving right away to go see his lover, and needs to actually walk around the long way instead of being a whore. His reason for not helping would determine how far from Gregory he is - he could be a far second or a close second, depending.
Gregory might have earned some blame for not crossing the river himself, but we don't have any information about what he was doing. Was he rebuilding the bridge? Was he packing up his belongings to hike downriver to where another bridge was? Was he willing to wait more than ten minutes to come up with a better solution before whoring himself out? We don't know. And besides, it's not like in the end Abbigail was worth the effort, it seems. Yeah, okay, maybe he didn't have any way of knowing that. If he had no excuse and Ivan had a good one, it's possible they might switch places.
Whew, I knew someone was going to jump on me for this one. I'm fishing in a way Inspector so bear with me.
At least you've got Abby and Sinbad together. Thank God someone thinks being a whoremonger is a bad thing.
I would completely agree if someone made the case that she sold herself too easily. Laughing at him being beaten is certianly over the top. No argument. Haivng said that, I think you've convinced me that Gregory shodul be higher, but not yet that Abby shoudl be worse than Sinbad.
As I said to Steve, the whole Abby vs. Stephen thing hinges on the moral evaluation of Abby's decision to sleep with Sinbad. The question to me becomes what sort of a mistake was it, ethically speaking. Was it the wrong principles, a lack of principles, or the right principles but poorly applied, or correctly and consistently applied principles? What she thought about what her other opportunities were does matter in the sense of was this something done of ignorance, naivite, stupidity, or fully conscious of the implications. Errors of knowledge and errors of morality so to speak. I agree that she is an idiot a childish naive one at that, but I'm not convinced she is a whore. That makes a
big difference in her moral evaluation.
To say that she sold herself too easily, implies that there is some goal for which selling herself would have been moral. Sophia has already talked about the urgency and life threatening nature she might have liked to see. But what that says to me is that Abby had the equations (i.e. te principles) lined up correctly. She just failed to put the right values in for the variables and came up with a greater than, when it should have been a less than. This is far better than Sinbad who simply had the wrong equations. There is no ethical logic that allows one to purchase sex from someone else at any price (ah but that's a whole other thread) that makes it "valuable". It's faking reality, asking for the effect without the cause.
So I think you've persuaded me to revise it to
Slug
Sinbad
Abby
Gregory (I don't care much about Ivan. I think he's just a spoiler)
But you haven't convinced me to flip Sinbad and Abby yet. I think she's an idiot, naive, whatever, and Gregory (now I'm changing my earlier position) is justified in either dumping her or giving her a talking to (but that's because I think she's stupid, and not a psychopathic whore). Now if you said that if she hadn't have taken pleasure in Gregory's beating, that you'd place her in my order, then I'd probably concede that the pleasure at his beating might push her past Sinbad, but that's a whole discussion about the compounding of infractions. Based upon her choice up to the point Gregory rejects her, I think I could defend my list.
No, no no. Abbigail sold her highest value waaaay too easily and as Mammon said, completely undercut the entire point of what she was doing.
So humor me, and clarify this for me. What is Abby's "highest value"? i.e. what did she sell? I'm trying to smoke out what sort of things people think are intrinsic in the act itself.
Edited by KendallJ, 21 December 2007 - 06:17 PM.
