Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25112275-20141218163520/@comment-76.18.74.10-20141223091651

TheOmegaWerewolf wrote:

I don't fully understand what people mean when they refer to "shades of black and white" or "shades of grey". I sort of understand it but not a lot, so can you maybe explain it to me? If white = 100% GOOD and black = 100% BAD, a "shade of grey" would refer to a moral dilemma wherein an action was both good AND bad at the same time, thus metaphorically mixing white(good) and black(bad) into a shade of grey.

A hypothetical example is this age old dilemma:  Would you murder 1 person to save 5 others? In fact, this exact dilemma was addressed in season one when the council (Kane, Jaha, Abby, etc) were debating whether to kill off a certain amount of innocent people on the Ark in order to conserve oxygen. This is an example of a situation that is not black and white, as there is no clear cut "good" or "bad" decision.

With that said, I also didn't follow the previous poster's logic when he said execution makes for a black and white world. I'm not sure if he's blaming the grounders or the show writers.