the human flaw (according to nerds)

at barnes and nobles, i happened to pickup book about Races and Classes.

now before all you berkeley people get all excited, i'm gonna burst the bubble right now and tell you it was a Dungeons & Dragons guide (which made it infinitely more appealing to me, and the only reason why i didn't instantly collapse from boredom).

Now, i've never played d&d, but i have dabbled in final fantasy, dragonlance books, warcraft and the like, so i am familiar with race and class.

for all you people who aren't savvy with fantasy worlds,
Race refers to humans, elves, dwarves, etc.
and Class refers to roles such as knight, cleric, mage, priest, etc.

Now for the interesting stuff. in many roleplaying games and fantasy worlds in general, different races have recurring characteristics, strengths, and weakness.

dwarves are strong and resilient, but short-tempered and stubborn. elves are artistic and graceful, but are aloof and vain, or elitist.

Humans have long been described as the ambitious, adventurous, and adaptable. but the author brought up something that bothered him: all of the descriptions were positive. i didn't realize it til be brought it up, but yeah! why don't we have a weakness? i'm fairly positive we DO have weakness, but it's hard to assign one to mankind in general.

but he (and the development team of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition) thought of one that seemed to fit in the context of the game and the fictional world's lore:

corruptibility.

human "ambition" easily becomes greed, and one can imagine our "adaptability" lends to flexibility of morals. i gotta say, i was impressed. looking at the world today, (and yesterday, and years of history...) it's hard to argue with the ability of mankind to be corrupted. it's also worth noting that of these fictional races, humans are also the least culturally rooted in religion and spirituality. is there a connection? do we imagine there to be a connection?

and what makes it even more interesting is that the "humans" in this fictional world represent how we imagine ourselves. so what does it mean that we can call ourselves corruptible and relatively faithless in comparison to other "races" (whom we have also authored ourselves)?

interesting.

and nerdy, on so many levels.