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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3659823" data-attributes="member: 4937">There is a good reason for that.  I don't clear know what I think either, and so naturally my answer is couched in uncertainty.  It is however NOT couched in relativism.  I certainly do not think all answers are equally valid.  There is probably one best answer.  But, I don't know what that one best answer is, and to be honest I'm not even sure I can tell a good answer from a bad one.  The reason for that is somewhat complicated.  I think the best way I can answer it is approach the question from a different angle.  To be honest, I think it would kill it.  I think that a forced alignment shift would be the equivalent of smashing a glass vase, melting down the peices, and reshaping it with an unloving hand to something else.  I think it would be the most brutal thing I can imagine short of actually destroying a soul, and while less violent would be more cruel.  I think that at the moment it happens, former you ceases to exist permenently and that you can never go back.  I think you are reborn as something which would have been abhorrent to your former self, that would not be the you you were, but since you aren't your former self you love yourself as you love your own flesh.  Only, terribly, your new self has been given the illusion of being another self by having the memories of the former self scrawled into it and that most terrible of all it wouldn't contain the moment where former self agreed to become new self and baby stepped its way as close as it could to that and I think that this would increase the brutality of the moment - the difference between making love and rape, between martyrdom and murder.  I think you would say, "I'm not the person I was.", and you really would literally not be the person you were.To the extent that I even understand what I just wrote, and frankly I don't, I'd run it like that. But I assure you, I don't actually know what would happen and I can only guess at it.  Given what I think actually happens, I'd be very skeptical of excercising that power if it was granted to me even with the intention of doing good.  I'd consider it a form of execution.  The only time I can even imagine its justifiable is when the life of the person is justly forfiet anyway, in which case it is probably no more cruel than the alternatives - life long imprisonment or death. And I think society would need some special ritual for dealing with that fact that you've got the same body walking around, but a different identity.  I suggest cleansing ceremonies, renaming ceremonies, mandatory entry into some form of service organization, or whatever to help society understand that change.  I think that's where you think I'm being relative, but if you see the purpose behind all my suggestions you'll see that I'm just trying to communicate, and language is relative to the hearer.  But the meaning I'm trying to convey is absolute.</blockquote>

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