Has to be one of the best passages of a book I’ve read in a long time
it’s not an understatement to say I think about this all the time
[id: A picture of a page from a Terry Pratchett book. Italics on page marked with asterisks in this transcript. Page reads:
All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because *they are mine!* *I have a duty!*
/end id]
The notes say that this is from The Wee Free Men!
Did anyone ever consider the contradiction of this perspective and the other one given in Discworld that sin is when you treat people as things?
I don’t see it as anything approaching contradiction, to be honest.
The “treating people like things” is how you treat people when you are interacting with them, or having an impact on their lives.
The Tiffany quote is about motivation, not interaction.
So Tiffany’s motivation isn’t treating people as things, (no witch who wasn’t already predisposed to cackling could do that) it’s about treating everything as your responsibility, as being under your protection as their witch, and so being motivated to action by that responsibility.
You don’t even have to like them, or think them good people, but if they are your repsonsibility, you help them.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor around here. If I don’t help them, who will?”
Using her own selfishness to make sure that HER land and HER people are protected is the opposite of treating them like things. They are EVERYTHING to her, but as individual responsibilities.
























