POLL ADDED FOR DEBATE! Lojozz V Hope - Is Ben a good guy

Lojozz wrote:

Lets start with a definition of Good Guy: morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious: a good man.

For Ben to be a Good Guy he must surely have some of those characteristics but he
lies and manipulates all the time which pretty much counts out all of
the above. I will however give evidence of much more than lying and
manipulating to prove Ben can not possibly be a good guy.

So
lets look at some examples of Ben not being the good guy. The thing
that sticks out for me more than anything else is him sending Goodwin
to his death because he was jealous of his relationship with Juliet.
Add to that the heartless way he showed her the body and ranted that
she was his and it becomes really difficult to reconcile Ben as a good
guy.

JULIET: Why are you showing me this? Why did you bring me out here?

BEN: What, you mean instead of his wife?

JULIET:
You knew this would happen. You sent him out here because you knew this
would happen. (Cries) You wanted this! You wanted him to die! Why?

BEN:
"Why"? You're asking me why? After everything I did to get you here,
after everything I've done to keep you here, how can you possibly not
understand... that you're mine?

This is an admission that he did send Goodwin knowing he would die and he did it to show Juliet that he owns her.

Not
enough? Ok, how about out and out murder, in fact not just murder
patricide. Ben killed his father, who granted was an unpleasant man but
did he really deserve to be gassed to death by his own son. This was
done in an incredibly cold and calculating way, with not even a hint of
guilt for his actions. Now even if we consider that this was a test he
needed to fulfill to become the leader of the others, presumably like
Locke, at that point he did not know the secrets of the island or
Jacob. We have to conclude that he killed his father in a quest for
power. Good Guy behavior? I think not.

One
murder not enough well Ben was complicit in the killing of all of the
Dharma Initiative on the island. Again without any emotion or feeling.
The only nicety we saw was him closing Goodspeed’s eyes.

He is also happy to kidnap children consider the following conversation:

BEN: I wanna thank you for how wonderful you've been with Zack and Emma.

JULIET:
They're really sweet kids. (Chuckles) Ben, they've been asking me about
their mother in Los Angeles. I'm not really sure what to say.

BEN: They'll stop asking in time.

JULIET: They're children. Do they really belong here?

BEN: They're on the list, Juliet.

(Ben hands Juliet her serving.)

BEN: Who are we to question who's on the list and who's not?

Seems
to me that Ben is suggesting that he’s just following orders which in
essence is the ’Nuremberg Defense’, and that to me is not and has never
been acceptable, especially if you want to claim you are a good guy.

So
what else has Ben done, he shot Locke and left him for dead in a fit of
jealous rage because Locke had heard Jacob. He also gambled with his
daughters life to save his own. Alex was killed because Ben failed to
act like the ‘good guy’ and surrender. A good guy would have been
prepared to give up his life to save his daughter. Whilst we are on the
subject, do good guys go after revenge? Ben has told Widmore that he is
going to kill Penny to make him understand how he feels. So he is going
to kill an innocent, somebody who has not wronged him in the slightest
just so he can make a man understand how he feels. Yeah that’s real
good guy behavior.

So
lets have a quick recap of Benjamin Linus’ character. A man who lies
constantly, who manipulates at every opportunity to achieve his own
goals. A man who happily murdered his own father and the rest of the
island inhabitants without a flicker of emotion or guilt. A man who
kidnaps children because they appear on a list. A jealous guy who we’ve
seen send one man to his death, shot and left another for dead because
of this jealous streak. A man who operates on petty revenge, but
because he cant take revenge on the person responsible is happy to kill
an innocent to achieve his revenge. On the other side he closes a dead
mans eyes in what looked like a mark of respect, well if he had
respected him perhaps it would have been better to warn him what was
going to happen.

Ben
may believe he is a good guy and he may believe he is acting for the
greater good but I would suggest that Ben is in fact a sociopath with a
strong bent towards self delusion. Here are a few sociopathic indicators



· Manipulative and Conning

· Grandiose Sense of Self

· Pathological Lying

· Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt

Sound like anyone we know?



Just
because somebody thinks they are the good guy and believe they are
doing the right thing, it does not make it true. Even if we believe
that in some cases evil deeds can be necessary and excused for the
cause of the greater good, can we really say that a man who constantly
carries out bad deeds for whatever excuse, is a good guy.

I
can not think of any instance where Ben has actually acted as the good
guy. The only thing that comes close was him keeping his word to let
Michael leave, but as we all know this was just so he could later play
on Michael’s guilt to get him to work for him.


Remember, Ben is not one of the Good Guys Ben is a sociopath.

Hope wrote:WHY BEN IS THE GOOD GUY!!

First I want
to start off by saying that I am not going near the Juliet-Goodwin
stuff unless it is otherwise brought up. I think that when we are
talking about Ben being one of the “good guys”, we are talking in
relation to the island and our Losties.

Ben's first
questionable act is the purging of the Dharma Initiative. First I must
say that we didn't actually see him purge the Dharma Initiative, we
only saw him gas his father at the same exact time that the DI is
purged. Also, the DI was purged with their own weapon, which, in my
opinion, puts the DI's intentions into question. I don't want to add
very many of my own theories or speculations in this debate. That being
said; I think that the Hostiles initiated that attack on the DI with
Ben's help. I don't believe that the 'purge' can be used as an example
of Ben's integrity because we don't know which side the DI was on.

So,
I think everything else can be explained as Ben helping the greater
good. Being a leader is tough. People can mistake a Leader as a bad guy
because they don't understand why he choose to make the decision that
he made. And in Ben's case, there seems to be some kind of future
knowledge about what is about to happen, so it would seem as though he
understands the ramifications of the decisions that he is making.

The
islands leader is a very important person. One just can't be elected
into the job. No, someone visits you at an early age and starts the
grooming process. So Ben would need to stay alive until a new leader is
ready for the job. So yes, Locke was going to be the new leader but he
wasn't ready yet. That is why Ben needed his surgery. That is why he
needed to kidnap Jack, Kate, and Sawyer. He could have gone about it a
different way, but he probably would have died in the process. So why
his actions are questionable, his intentions are good. Survive and
protect.

I know that Ben having his people steal
babies and children out of the forest and taking them back to New
Otherton seems cruel. But here his intentions are good. None of the
children he had taken from the beach had parents, so they were
orphaned. In New Otherton, they can be fed and bathed and clothed and
loved. How is that bad? And Alex, if he truly believed that Rosseau was
crazy, then he was protecting her from demise in the forest. He raised
her as his own and loved her. Truly and evil man.

His
actions regarding Karl are also questionable. Yes Ben had Karl placed
in a room for brainwashing. Yes Ben locked Karl in a cage. But why? He
loves his daughter. He truly didn't want her to become pregnant and
die. Alex was all he had. Alex was rebelling when she released Claire
and helped Kate and Sawyer. She just wanted to be with Karl, but daddy
was being unreasonable. When in reality, he was just trying to do good
by his daughter. So, here also his intentions are good.

I
mentioned Claire. Yes she was kidnapped. But put in a room with nice
baby furniture and a doctor facility near by. I don't think they had
intentions of keeping Aaron for themselves, I think they would have let
Claire live there and raise him. She was just freaked out, justifiably
so.

And closer to the end, when he shot Charlotte, I
think it was pretty obvious that he knew she was wearing a bullet proof
vest. I think that he knew he had to do something to save himself, and
exposing her as a potential bad guy bought him his life. So again,
actions are questionable but his intentions are good. If he had died
then, he wouldn't have been around to ultimately sacrifice himself so
save the island.

I really felt for Ben when he finally met
Keamy. He honestly thought that he could defuse the situation. He
thought that yes, he would hurt Alex's feelings, but atleast she would
live. He went into revenge mode the second she was murdered. And given
the situation that Ben is in, I can't say that I wouldn't do the same
thing.

Yes he killed Keamy, and I say, good job
Ben Linus. I don't know what I would do if I watched my own daughter
get shot before my eyes. And then to have the same bastard come after
me, I think that I would probably do the same thing. KILL HIM!!!! To
hell with the freighter people, they are bad guys anyways. Come to
steal the island and use it for bad. Atleast we know that they were
going to capture Ben and then kill every one on the island. That is
bad.

Ultimately, Ben has a heart. He cares about
his home, his people, and will do anything to protect those things. In
the end, we see him protecting the Losties that are left. He even
sacrifices it all to move the island. He can never go back. So what
does he do? Aligns himself with Sayid to protect the O6 and the island.
Who cares if it seems as though he is only trying to get the O6 to go
together so he can also return. It is the only home that he knows. It
makes sense that he would want to go back. And besides if the island is
in peril because Kate, Jack, Sayid, Hurley, Sun and Aaron left, then it
only makes sense that Ben would try to fix that. Besides, John appears
to be dead, so the island needs its old leader back right??

Lojozz wrote:

Stickman:
"Good; Micheal dies, Widmore can not get to the island anymore, Keamy is dead and Alex is avenged.
Bad; Some people would have died, Oceanic six crashed".

Why is it good that Michael dies? Alex is not avenged in Ben's mind because he still goes on to tell Widmore he will kill his daughter.

Some people die? What value do you put on a single life? What value do you put on a father to be, being blown up whilst his wife is watching? What value do you put on a freighter full of innocent people being killed because you lost the plot? A good guy does not respond to this with "So".