IS the mask of mind control imoral?

[boston100]

Is the mask of mind control and inmoral mask? it dosnt seem like a good thing 2 do 2 make people do things against their will.

Also could the mask of speed double as a mask of strengh?for puching or kicking you could just speed that up and it would be like getting hit by a car? How come we never saw that in the books? is it beacause u have 2 speed up your whole body?

Thats all 4 today.

[Jinkmeister]

It depends entirely on whose hands it's in. Any mask or power, when misused, can be a wicked force of evil. The masks and powers themselves cannot be intrinsically evil, it depends entirely on who's wielding them.

[Baron Von Nebula]

The Mask of Mind Control cannot be used to make a target do anything they consider immoral. As such, it cannot be used to make someone do something they strongly object to.

[bonesiii]

Its primary uses are to send a message faster than speech would allow to an ally, and as a defense against wild (or sometimes infected) Rahi who don't really have morals -- if an evil being uses it, they could make the Rahi do something bad, but an evil user of a Mask of Strength could smash someone to death, etc. so the possibility of evil use alone does not make the mask considered immoral.

 

And if your question is whether Toa consider it immoral, obviously not. You could consider it immoral if you like but same goes for anything so I presume the question is about Toa tradition.

 

The Mask of Speed is what it implies -- speed, not strength. In some situations it could help you do something better than without it in the strength category, sure. Throwing a lightweight rock far will work better with speed than without it, and maybe (if it's light enough) better than strength. But if you want to lift a heavy rock for example, hitting it faster is just going to hurt you; for that you want strength. In general it seems to me the effectiveness of speed goes down with increased mass of whatever you're trying to move, and the desirability of strength goes up accordingly.

 

Punching someone with speed activated would not be like being hit by a car, because a car has mass and therefore stronger momentum (it won't slow down as easily). It would really be like being hit by a small rocket (that doesn't blow up). And I wouldn't recommend it -- you might snap your arm off, or lesser but also bad damage. If you wanna make it feel like a car hitting you would want strength.

 

In general, using speed as a replacement for strength is just not recommended period. Where it would help, the effect you're using would have to be small to be safe for you, so it's just a waste of energy. Usually it's better to flee, zoom around and attack from behind, etc. which is why you saw this sort of thing far more often in the story, if not exclusively.

[Van Hohenheim]

uh....Bonesiii...how is the mask of speed related to whether the mask of Mind Control is immoral?

[Just A Dot]

I thought they considered masks immoral only if corrupt Makuta wore them, which is why they considered stuff like Bitil's mask immoral, and yet not Miserex's.

[bonesiii]

uh....Bonesiii...how is the mask of speed related to whether the mask of Mind Control is immoral?

You may have missed that the topic starter asked two questions, one of them being about the Mask of Speed.

 

I thought they considered masks immoral only if corrupt Makuta wore them, which is why they considered stuff like Bitil's mask immoral, and yet not Miserex's.

Probably that's part of it, but Greg did give some specific reasoning as to things like the Crast "repels nature" as to why the Toa thought them immoral. And Bitil's mask is messing with time in what might seem a rather careless way.

 

And maybe what you said is confirmed, not sure, but if not, then another possibility is just statistics; other Makuta probably wear non-immoral masks too, not just Miserix. Also, do we know how long every Makuta has worn those masks? Maybe some of them took to wearing obviously immoral (or more subtle) masks later on?

[Just A Dot]

 

uh....Bonesiii...how is the mask of speed related to whether the mask of Mind Control is immoral?

You may have missed that the topic starter asked two questions, one of them being about the Mask of Speed.

 

I thought they considered masks immoral only if corrupt Makuta wore them, which is why they considered stuff like Bitil's mask immoral, and yet not Miserex's.

Probably that's part of it, but Greg did give some specific reasoning as to things like the Crast "repels nature" as to why the Toa thought them immoral. And Bitil's mask is messing with time in what might seem a rather careless way.

 

And maybe what you said is confirmed, not sure, but if not, then another possibility is just statistics; other Makuta probably wear non-immoral masks too, not just Miserix. Also, do we know how long every Makuta has worn those masks? Maybe some of them took to wearing obviously immoral (or more subtle) masks later on?

 

 

Doesn't the Crast just repel in general? I mean, Toa of Fire burn nature, and the Olmak does everything it can to defy nature, as does the Vahi, and, heck, even the Ignika.

[bonesiii]

Doesn't the Crast just repel in general? I mean, Toa of Fire burn nature

Yeah, the reasoning is shaky but that's what we were told.

 

Plus, if I was being targeted by a deadly projectile, I'd feel perfectly moral repelling that nature. But the truth may be a bit of both this and your answer -- it may just be a "justification" made up by Toa after Makuta had started wearing it. In other cases a power is clearly immoral in and of itself so it might go in reverse. Neither answer has to be universal per se.

[Radagast367]

Also, hitting someone at the speed of sound, or at least very, very, fast, would probably kill or at least severely incapacitate (depending on the speed) you- that much speed would create shockwaves through your arm, I think.

Note: I'm talking about accidently killing YOURSELF, not your enemy, in case of any confusion.

[Exitium]

The masks and powers themselves cannot be intrinsically evil, it depends entirely on who's wielding them.

While normally I'd be inclined to agree with this line of reasoning, BS01 says that Toa generally consider the masks worn by Makuta to be immoral (although it's a little vague about whether the Makuta use them because they're immoral or they're immoral because Makuta use them). The only other immoral mask would be the mask of reanimation (Matoro's mask), which apparently the Ignika gave him as a test of his character. Personally, I would have liked to have seen Greg explore this aspect of Matoro more, but I suppose that would be a bit beyond Bionicle's target audience. The philosophical implications of the mask of mind control could also make for an interesting read.

 

Punching someone with speed activated would not be like being hit by a car, because a car has mass and therefore stronger momentum (it won't slow down as easily). It would really be like being hit by a small rocket (that doesn't blow up).

Actually momentum is mass times velocity, so something moving very fast would have a lot of momentum, potentially as much as a vehicle if it were moving fast enough to compensate for lack of mass. (This is why bullets, for example, which have very little mass, are quite deadly.) So I imagine being punched with the mask of speed active would hurt quite a lot, but judging from what we've seen in the canon, this would be a poor strategy because you can't have, say, only your fist move at high velocity. In order for this to be effective, the attacker would have to already be running past the target. It also would be completely useless in lifting heavy objects, as bonesiii said, when the mask of strength would be much more effective.

 

Also, hitting someone at the speed of sound, or at least very, very, fast, would probably kill or at least severely incapacitate (depending on the speed) you- that much speed would create shockwaves through your arm, I think.

Yeah, there's also Newton's second law (equal and opposite forces), which would suggest that the attacker would be impacted with a significant force as well. Toa have been shown to withstand more force than we can, but I imagine this strategy would backfire pretty easily.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Exitium

[Toa Of Anarchy]

As for the mask of speed, I don't have a satisfactory answer. However I can afirm that the mask of mind control is not imoral due to the fact that there is a whole bionicle element devoted to psionics which has all the powers of that mask and more.

So, yeah I think that the Toa define if a mask is imoral or not based on the power not on what the user can use it for.

All weapons can be used for either good or evil it all depends on the user.

[X-Ray]

One would think that giving such a morally ambiguous mask to someone like Onewa would fly in the face of logic. As it is, I would say that the mask isn't as immoral as, say, the Kanohi Tryna, but still has some pressing issues going with it. Forcing someone into doing something against their will... yeah.

 

X-Ray