In your mind, are mermaids good or evil?

[MiharuAya]

Do think that mermaids are good or evil? Or are they all different? Why?​

 

[Nemopedia]

That's like asking if animals have souls or if humans are inherently good/evil. Depends on what school of thought you support, I suppose. I believe merfolk are both.

 

[Nougat]

I'd also think that merpeople are all different! They have the capacity to do good or bad deeds so just as a mermaid might free fish from a fishing net they could just as well commit sea-bank robberies you know (and they could be saving the fish so they can manipulate them later or stealing money to pay for their grandmother's hospital bills, who knows) lol. I think any sentient organism would be multifaceted so I can't say the entire species as a whole is good or evil.

 

[Monbon]

The sea is cursed and scary. Mermaids should also be cursed and scary. It is how it is.

 

[Lyrikai]

I'd say it depends on the mermaid
Just as there are good people and bad people in the world, I'd say there would also be good mermaids and some downright nasty merfolk, too

 

[rissa]

they're prolly a mixed bag, as everything in life tends to be!

 

[FenFren]

I've always related mermaids to sirens, the creatures that lure you to sea to tear you to pieces. So, I always thought they were on the more evil side of the spectrum

 

[MaryGold]

Depends on who you ask, I guess. I have always thought of mermaids as being sweet and inherently good. But getting older and reading more about them in fiction. I might argue that they lean more toward neutral evil. I remembered when they tried to drown Wendy!

 

[Ravenwing778]

You're taking a supernatural entity and asking it to conform to human morality, much less the very black and white "good" or "evil"? Interesting.

 

[PolyesterH]

Mermaids have different interpretations and natures depending on the tradition of the local culture. For some they were a cause of flooding. shipwrecks, and drownings. In others they were benevolent or beneficial. In others, such as folklore on the British Isles and the Scandanavian havfrue, they could be either.

It is a disservice to these different cultures to take one cultures reading of them and say 'This is how mermaids are'.

However I do not lend credence to the idea that 'These are non-human creatures and thus you cannot judge them for their morality'. Merfolk are very commonly portrayed in folklroe to have sentience and agency. It is absolutely fair to judge a being with these things by human morality.

 

[Ravenwing778]

Mermaids have different interpretations and natures depending on the tradition of the local culture. For some they were a cause of flooding. shipwrecks, and drownings. In others they were benevolent or beneficial. In others, such as folklore on the British Isles and the Scandanavian havfrue, they could be either.

It is a disservice to these different cultures to take one cultures reading of them and say 'This is how mermaids are'.

However I do not lend credence to the idea that 'These are non-human creatures and thus you cannot judge them for their morality'. Merfolk are very commonly portrayed in folklroe to have sentience and agency. It is absolutely fair to judge a being with these things by human morality.

So you're saying anything sentient is human? Man, sci-fi would like to have words with you. I'm personally tired of Sapiocentric thinking in media as is.

 

[PolyesterH]

So you're saying anything sentient is human? Man, sci-fi would like to have words with you. I'm personally tired of Sapiocentric thinking in media as is.

No, that's a brand new sentence. I didn't even mention sentience, which is completely separate from having a human level cognitive ability. Most popular Sci-Fi (Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, countless other examples) expect there to be moral members of sapient races that follow something close to human morality with some tolerance for different cultures. These works make up most people's ideas of what Science Fiction is. You can't say 'Sci-Fi would have a word with me' when the most popular works of Sci-Fi would say I'm right.

Even some of the most popular Urban Fantasy works tend to portray Vampires, actual predators that feast on human blood, that don't follow anything human moral code as deserving to die. This is because you don't get around the fact that 'Murdering people is bad' just because you aren't human. Being non-human is not an excuse for murdering people. It does not absolve you of your actions and their consequences. This is because harm to people is real and isn't imaginary. Regardless of your status of human you have a moral obligation not to harm other sapients without justification, because as a sapient being you have agency through judgement, strategic perspective, systems perspective, and moral sentiment. Thats what Sapience is (Mobus, Sapience part 3, 2).

 

[Spooder Queen]

Only the sith deal in absolutes.