At 03:57 PM 11/17/97 -0600, John W. Biles wrote:

That's not the problem I have with this story, it's the idea of
"Conservation of Evil" which bothers me. In a universe in which such was
true, all human striving to improve the world would be futile, for if you
solved one problem, you would only, and always create another one.  It
also conflates natural evil (Earthquakes, fires, floods) and human/moral
evil.  If you did have progress in fighting natural evil (which clearly
has occurred in at least some respects in our century), then you would
have to lose ground somewhere else.  

If evil is TRULY conserved, then every advance you make has to occur at
someone else's expense.  By helping someone, you would have to hurt
someone else.  

Actually, this idea strikes me as the one in Masume Shirow's Orion, where
they tried to collect all the bad karma in the empire into one place, and 
then destroy it (and the very desire to do this was, in itself a 
manifestation of bad karma).
	This was what Serenity was doing, collecting and concentrating the
evil that was in her realm; but she did not realise this. This does not
necesarily mean that evil has to be conserved; it can be lessened in 
various ways, by opposing it. 
	Serenity was not opposing evil in the traditional sense; she was
trying to prevent evil from being able to take place. Can you prevent an
earthquake? a storm? No, but you can prepare for such events so that they
do little to no damage (to use an analogy). Serenity was not trying to
lessen the impact of evil (creating and enforcing laws and organisations
to help people, for example), but was trying to stop evil from being able
to exist at all, which is where she went wrong.

P.S. One can find Orion in North America translated by Dark Horse (Studio
Proteus), and I believe it is available in one big Graphic Novel now.

Don't mind me, I've stopped making sense a long time ago....