Treating People as Things

Less a blog post, and more “something I want to have a persistent addressable record of”. Terry Pratchett has many pearls of wisdom that bear remembering¹ - this particular exchange takes place between Mightily Oats (a naïve well-intentioned religious missionary) and Granny Weatherwax (the tough embittered rustic crone-witch who will help anyone who needs it, but recognizes that “‘good’ ain’t the same as ’nice’”…)

(Future similar “posts” that are merely short quotations from literature will be similarly tagged with #snippets)

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.

“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.

“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”

“Nope.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”

“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”

• snippets