Awakening: Immoral Practice?

[DarkEnigma]

I recently finished Warbreaker and though I didn't think it was as strong as Mistborn (after reading about Allomancy, Awakening is rather ho-hum by comparison) I was struck by a philosophical notion:

Vivenna might have been prissy and naive towards the beginning of the story, but she was right about one thing: collecting the Breath of others, and by extension Awakening, is a morally bankrupt practice.

It is difficult to objectively analyze this issue because Sanderson doesn't tell us very much about the long-term effects of becoming a Drab but here are a few conclusions I was able to draw:

The consequences of losing one's Breath include, reduced life-expectancy, reduced resistance to sickness and disease, increased vulnerability to being snuck up on, increased predisposition to depression or melancholy, and general lack of joie de vive.

I belive that selling one's Breath is sort of like selling a kidney, or perhaps prostituting oneself: no, it isn't fatal but the physiological and psycological impact is life-long, far-reaching, and hard to quantify.  Even if a person isn't coerced into doing so, taking advantage of anothers destitution in this way seems at best callous and at worst downright vampiric.  These issues are, of course, greatly exacerbated when children are the victim. 

Given all this, I see Awakeners and Gods as similar to people who buy products made from sweat shops: they might not be directly responsible in taking advantage of others but their patronage enables the practice to flourish.  This makes Vivenna's descision at the end to embrace Awakening somewhat baffling.

Thoughts? Rebuttals?

[Miyabi]

I think your analogy is a very good one.  Especially when you consider that we seldom know the effects of what we do.  You ever bought a t-shirt?  Then odds are you've purchased something made in a sweat shop.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

There are definitely moral issues, and other nations aside from Hallandren see things much the way you do. The sequel will deal with some of them.

[Valkynphyre]

Glad to hear it. I totally agree.

It's definently murky territory.

[Ari54]

I think selling a kidney is probably the best analogy. There's nothing inherently bad about organ transplants, managed ethically they are probably a great force for good. What's wrong with the way breaths are handled in Hallandren is that they encourage people to give them up when they're expecting to live a long time afterwards. Passing on your Breath before you die, however, seems like it could be a more moral way of handling things.

[Rrikor]

In some cases I could see it as being immoral.  However, there are great benefits for people that could come out of it as well.  I am just trying to pull this out of my head right now but wasn't it stated at some point that if you have multiple breaths then you could pass on some but not all of those breaths.  Susebron was apparently going to do this with the child that was to replace him. 

If that was possible, the benefits could be seen more if it was more of a practice to give up your breath on your deathbed then to sell it early in life.  The breath does not die with the person so they are technically unlimited as long as they are passed on.  Or upon retiring the life of an awakener,  pass on all your breath except the one you need to survive. 

Vivian is taking on the life of an awakener, but I thought the were using already harvested breaths and don't follow the practice of taking more?  That may be my wishful thinking though.

[kari-no-sugata]

Unlike a kidney, Breath is safely re-transferable. So, if you give your own personal Breath to a Drab and they give it back to you, you've lost nothing. On the other end of the scale, it's not like people selling their hair. So, somewhere in between. I don't think we have enough information yet so place it along that scale with much precision... yet.

That I remember, I'm not quite sure just how much of a difference being a Drab makes to one's daily life. Or lifespan. Certainly with a large amount of Breath you effectively become immortal, but I don't remember any indications that becoming Drab halves your lifespan or the like. We see Vivi go cold turkey as it were, but she was going from hundreds to zero, not 1 to zero, so I'm not sure just how big a difference it is. Certainly lots of people seem to find worthwhile to sell their Breath, so how bad is it?

On a side note, you talk about Awakening being immoral, but what you're mostly talking about is collecting / selling / transferring Breath - I find this the most interesting aspect of the magic system - basically allows a bunch of nobodies to pool together their Breath and do some damage, providing their 'avatar' can be trusted and has any skill of course. At an economic level, you could 'pawn' your Breath, use the money to start up a business, make a profit and then buy your Breath back (or rather someone's Breath). I also wonder, do grandparents 'will' their Breath to the younger generation just before they die? You could stack up Breath down through the generations. I imagine that when you're nearly dead, your Breath would be quite weak, but it could still be worth it, particularly in the long term.

On another side note: one thing brought up several times is that it's not possible to have Breath ripped from you in practice. You have to willingly give it away, either by speaking the words or using strong enough mental thoughts. But, is this really true? After all, Nightblood seems to 'eat' Breath which doesn't seem that dissimilar from ripping Breath from someone involuntarily. Maybe there's an implied 'contract' when Nightblood is held / wielded...?

[Obsessiforge]

I think that Vivenna's people, the Idrians, agree with you - Their society is based on it, in fact.

I'd like to play devil's advocate here: I'm not 100% sure I was comfortable with Awakening and breath-transfer, but the jury's still out.

In the meantime, consider the analogies given: Organ donation may be seen as immoral as it leaves the donor less whole. However, it allows someone else to live. Presumably, and in a lot of cases, it allows someone the donor cares about deeply to live - which is much the way that many people who sell their breath to the Returned feel. Jewels was an example of this: A drab, yes, but she took pride in it.

To use the other example, I've seen prostitution used as an example as well, but isn't that circumstantial as well? consider the following example:

 a wife and her ten children transfer their breath to her husband so that he might become an Awakener, and do great things. In fact, she gathers her extended family and convinces them all to invest in him, to help him represent their family in honor and yadda yadda yadda. He goes on to use that breath to do great things, and bring happiness to his family. Is his whole family whoring themselves out to him, or is it a sign of trust and love?

Furthermore, if the breath is transferred to an Awakener on a deathbed, in the manner Vivenna received hers? When she couldn't have refused it? Is that immoral?

Muddy is the issue indeed.

Yoda must move on to another topic now...one more lighthearted perhaps.

[Ari54]

Kari: You're absolutely right that breath is re-transferable, to a certain degree, but I wasn't so much concerned with that as the point at which a society would regard it acceptable to transfer away all of your Breath. That is much more like donating a kidney, I think, rather than say, engaging in some behaviour that might be a temporary risk to your health, like eating badly.

[DarkEnigma]

First, a couple of points of order:

Vivenna caught some kind of disease within days of becoming a Drab even though she had been in Hallandren for months.  This suggests to me that the toll on the body's immune system is fairly significant once your Breath is lost.  Exactly how significant the loss to life-expectancy is, however, is unclear.

Also, Sanderson did make it clear that giving up Breath was an all-or-nothing affair. You can't dole out individual Breaths from your stockpile to others.

Given that, it does make Vivenna's unique situation a bit more sympathetic: the Breath was thrust on her without her consent and the only way she could rid herself of it is to become a Drab herself.  However, using Awakening in the heat of battle to save one's life (or her sister's life) is one thing; embracing the Awakener lifestyle once the danger is past is something else altogether.  I thought she might perhaps dedicate her significantly longer life-span to helping the needy or perhaps sell the wealth of Breath and use the funds to set up a trust that people could turn to as an alternative to selling their Breath.

As far as giving up your Breath on your deathbed to help the next generation, I don't see anything morally wrong with that.  Creating a kind of family heirloom of the Breath passed from grandparent to grandchild for generations so that each new generation leads a healthier life than the last sounds like a good idea. 

The real issue is when perfectly healthy people or children are coerced, brainwashed (through religion?), or bribed into giving up their Breath.  Breath has to come from somewhere, and people who are financially stable are unlikely to give up an unknown number of years off of their lifespan (not to mention put up with more sick days and melancholy to boot) for a quick score.  That means the most likely candidates are those who are destitute.  Ergo, anyone who willingly buys Breath is profiting from the misery of others, which covers the majority of Awakeners.

Finally, as far as a family or community pooling their collective Breath into one person; that might make sense if the community were threatened by a discrete, immediate, existential threat that an Awakener might be able to deal with.  Otherwise, what's the point?  What could an Awakener accomplish for the community that would be worth dozens of people dying sooner, being weaker of constitution, and taking less joy from life?

[Miyabi]

You have to consider though that she was used to eating and living well and suddenly became a beggar.  The lack of food and hygienic conditions has a HUGE effect on the matter of her getting sick.

[DarkEnigma]

Excellent point, although I wonder if it would be a "huge" effect.  As you say, she was well fed and cared for prior to her stint as a beggar.  I think it might take more than a week or so of malnutrition to have a huge impact on her immune system.  Still, it is a mitigating factor.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Also, Sanderson did make it clear that giving up Breath was an all-or-nothing affair. You can't dole out individual Breaths from your stockpile to others.

Actually, Brandon made it clear that this was a myth that lots of people believed and that Denth wanted to perpetuate. Even if you don't have fine control, there's an easy way around it, which Vasher used to give a breath to that little girl: put almost all of your breath into an object, give the remaining breath away, then take back all the breath from the object.

[DarkEnigma]

Hmm... Having reread the pertinent scene I see what you mean, although what actually happens is quite vague.  Vivenna notices the girl's aura "flicker" then wonders if Denth was lying to her about the all-or-nothing rule.  Is there an annotation elucidating this issue?

At any rate, assuming you are correct, that darkens my view of Awakeners in general and Vivenna in particular a great deal.  There is, then, no excuse not to return her ill-gotten gains to those in need.

[Miyabi]

I'm not going to lie, I'd be one of those people striving to find more breathes anyway I could.  The ability to make yourself essentially into a god (No sickness, extended life) would be too tempting for me.