History MoralMyopia / Literature

* ''Literature/TheGraceOfKings'': Matu Zyndu was trained from birth to live like a WarriorPrince out of legend, so he doesn't understand how other people might have other motivations -- like, say, living in peace and safety. He's described as a man who would cry for the death of his horse but not understand why his civilians might object to having all their food stores seized for his armies.

-->''"Is it not a just retribution?" I could not help but ask.\\

"You do not understand," she replied. "We therns are a holy race. It is an honour to a lesser creature to be a slave among us. Did we not occasionally save a few of the lower orders that stupidly float down an unknown river to an unknown end all would become the prey of the plant men and the apes."''

* ''Literature/{{Confessions}}'': When playing games with his friends, our saintly narrator would denounce any slight breach of the rules with all his ferocity; whenever anyone caught him cheating, he would react with equal ferocity in order to defend himself, with no moral qualm except whether his defense would help him win the game.

** Snape practices this ''a lot''. He calmly defends his friend [[{{Sadist}} Mulciber's]] action as a "bit of fun" in a NoodleIncident that Lily claims was dark magic, while despising [[TheBully James Potter]] because he personally was on the receiving end of James's admittedly cruel but not dark or dangerous "bit of fun." He shows predjudice against Muggle-borns calling them mudbloods and planning to join the Death Eaters, who intend to pursue a genocide against them, while his own best friend is a Muggle-born witch whom he is horrified to have called mudblood in a fit of anger. As she later points out when he tries to apologize, he would call anyone of her birth "mudblood", so she should really be no different. His decision to [[spoiler:turn against Voldemort]] is motivated not by the fact that the man is responsible for an unimaginable number of murders of innocent people and other horrific crimes, but because he specifically targets [[spoiler:Lily Potter]], the love of Snape's life. Dumbledore calls him out on this when Snape admits that he has asked Voldemort [[spoiler:to spare Lily]] while killing the rest of her family.

'''Ron''': Yes, but not to ''us!''
** More generally speaking, Snape practiced this ''a lot'' and is a strong display at how self-centered he was towards his friends in Hogwarts. He calmly defended his friend [[{{Sadist}} Mulciber's]] action as a "bit of fun" in a NoodleIncident that Lily claims was dark magic, while being on the receiving end of [[{{Sadist}}Sadist James Potter's]] "bit of fun." Mind you, Mulciber was a part of a group who would become the Death Eaters.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': A couple of orcs actively engage in a case of it in ''The Two Towers''. The orcs from two different strongholds come to check the path through [[GiantSpider Shelob's]] lair after Frodo and Sam fight her, and Frodo is apparently killed by her sting. When the leaders get together and talk things over, one scornfully condemns Sam leaving Frodo behind as "a regular Elvish trick." However, a few minutes later that same orc tells about how one of his men was stung by Shelob and they came across him still alive and captive in her webs sometime later... but didn't even try to rescue him because it wasn't worth the time, effort, or the risk of earning Shelob's wrath. Both orcs get a good laugh out of the story without ever drawing a connection between the two incidents.

* ''Literature/CradleSeries'': Due to the constant use of AsskickingEqualsAuthority, the vast majority of sacred artists are bullies who will do anything to get ahead, and then call an honor duel when someone else does the same thing to them. Lindon has, on multiple occasions, been called an honorless dog for the crime of ''not dying'' when someone much more powerful randomly attacked him.

** ''[[Literature/TalesOfTheFiveHundredKingdoms The Fairy Godmother]]'': Alexander starts off with a severe case of "anything a noble like me does is fine". Trying to trample a crippled old woman under his warhorse's hooves? A reasonable tactic. Being [[BalefulPolymorph transformed]] by the not-so-crippled, not-so-old Godmother he just tried to kill, and dragged off for lessons in being a decent person? She's obviously a peasant, which makes this totally unforgivable. [[BreakTheHaughty She quickly breaks him of this thought process.]]

** More generally speaking, Snape practiced this ''a lot'' and is a strong display at how self-centered he was towards his friends in Hogwarts. He calmly defended his friend [[Sadist Mulciber's]] action as a "bit of fun" in a NoodleIncident that Lily claims was dark magic, while being on the receiving end of [[Sadist James Potter's]] "bit of fun." Mind you, Mulciber was a part of a group who would become the Death Eaters.

* ''Literature/TheVampireCountOfMonteCristo'' takes it up to the eleven.

** More generally speaking, Snape practiced this ''a lot'' and is a strong display at how self-centered he was towards his friends in Hogwarts. He calmly defended his friend Mulciber's action as a "bit of fun" in a NoodleIncident that Lily claims was dark magic, while being on the receiving end of James Potter's "bit of fun." Mind you, Mulciber was a part of a group who would become the Death Eaters.

* ''Literature/TheHost'': To the Souls, having the host gain control of them and thus erase their identity is considered a FateWorseThanDeath. The Souls doing this to their hosts is, of course, nothing of the sort. This comes with the territory for a race of {{puppeteer parasite}}s.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' definitely has a lot of this going on with most of the different factions, as is fitting for the GreyAndGrayMorality of this CrapsackWorld full of FeudingFamilies and power-plays. Possibly the best example of this is the exiled Princess, Daenerys Targaryen. She is fiercely loyal and kind to those she cares about, and tries ''really'' hard to be a good ruler when she gets the chance to rule in Essos. However, she still wants to return to Westeros and reclaim the Iron Throne because she considers it rightfully hers, and wrongfully taken from her father. Never mind the fact that this means she therefore basically starts out treating cities in Essos as tutorials to get her hand in before heading to a home she doesn't even remember, rather than complex places with layered cultures deserving less of a disdainful attitude when they don't meet her Westerosi-based ethics. Also, never mind the other fact that her father was widely known as [[TheCaligula the "Mad King"]] and lost her originally Valyrian family's self-forged titles as a direct result of his own actions. The main instance where her conviction is shaken a even a little about her automatic right to rule in either continent is when she confidently declares that she holds Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister equally responsible for the Lannisters' slaughter of her brother's infant children, despite Ned being furious at the murders. This is because "If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty." But, then she hesitates when she remembers that one of her dragons killed a child of one of her own conquered subjects, and that, by her own standards, she is morally responsible for that, too -- even though she had no full say in Drogon's action. Note that in this world of feuding nobles who get huge numbers of peasants killed for their honour or ambition, this counts as a moment of extreme self-reflection, and few of the other characters (even the "good" ones), ever seem to truly consider the damage they cause unless it affects members of their own family or people under their protection. Also she claims the famously honourable Ned Stark had no honour for rebelling against Aerys II, even though the Mad King burnt Ned's father alive, strangled his older brother, then tried to have Ned and his best friend killed. The fact that Dany has responded just as forcefully (if not more so) to anyone attempting to harm people she cares about flies right over her head.

** Director Tagg shows absolutely no remorse about trying to harm Skitter through her father despite being a father of daughters himself.

** More generally speaking, Snape practiced this ''a lot'' and is a strong display at how self-centered he is. He calmly defended his friend Mulciber's action as a "bit of fun" in a NoodleIncident that Lily claims was dark magic, while being on the receiving end of James Potter's "bit of fun." Mind you, Mulciber was a part of a group who would become the Death Eaters and while the Marauders only ever got into fights with Snape (really only James and to a lesser extent Sirius while Lupin and Peter followed) and pranked a few people, Snape's gangs targeted all sorts of people.

* In Tanya Huff's ''[[Literature/SmokeAndShadows Smoke and Mirrors]]'' antagonist Creighton Caufield expresses the disgust over protagonist Tony's homosexuality that one might expect from a moralistic person from the early-20th Century. Indeed, he explicitly states that "Homosexuality is against the law of nature". The fact that he's the ghost of a [[TheNecromancer necromancer]] [[PoweredByAForsakenChild who feeds off the energy generated by tormented]] [[SoulPower captive souls]] as part of a bid to become a Lovecraftian EldritchAbomination somewhat undermines his claim to rectitude however.

* In a story from ''The Case-Book Of SherlockHolmes'', a man conceals his sister's natural death so he won't lose access to her fortune until after he cleans up at the horse races. He defends his actions to Holmes, insisting that he did nothing that was [[DueToTheDead disrespectful of the dead]], even keeping his sister's body safe within the family crypt. Nobody points out that he'd first had his servant drag a body that was ''already in'' the tomb from its rightful resting place, burn it in the stove piece by piece, and then throw the ashes out with the trash.

** Jeremiah Stafford, one of the two Consuls of [[FantasyCounterpartCulture the United States of Atlantis]] in ''Liberating Atlantis'', is a conservative slave-owner from the southern part of the island continent and repeatedly voices his objections to the slave rebellion which forms the central conflict of the story, complaining about the slaves killing their owners and sometimes raping white women as revenge for decades of oppression. It's also pointed out throughout the story that slave-owning whites have been doing the same thing to their slaves for far longer and he always dismisses it as not being the same, firmly believing that whites running the world while blacks and Terranovan copperskins (the consistent term for Native Americans in this timeline) is the natural order of things and it's unthinkable that it could ever be any different. [[spoiler:He comes around by the end and has more of a healthy respect for the ex-slaves, even putting down the arguments of his own political allies when they debate abolishing slavery in Atlantis]].

* Creator/HarryTurtledove:
** The ''Literature/WorldWar'' series has The Race, a race of lizard-like aliens who come to Earth during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII to add the planet to their empire. Because their kind are so slow to change, they think everyone and everything should fall within their own standards. For example, they refer to Earthly religions as superstitions, but believe in their own version of Heaven as fervently as any human true believer. Their justification for this? Because their entire species, as well as the two races they conquered, have believed this for tens of thousands of years. If they were wrong about their afterlife, [[SarcasmMode don't you think they'd know by now]]?
** This is actually a frequent theme in all of Turtledove's work. You'll often have a character revile the actions of the others side when his side is doing the exact same thing. And just in case you missed it, he'll helpfully point out that the character doesn't notice his own hypocrisy.
** This is the Race's [[PlanetOfHats hat]]. One of the main Race characters is a "landcruiser" (i.e. tank) driver who revels in the thought of rolling along in his impenetrable armor and obliterating the savage Tosevites (their word for humans). Then a sniper kills the tank commander (who is looking out of the hatch), causing the driver to throw a fit at this injustice. It's perfectly ok for the Race to kill while invading, but ''not for the damned savages''. Another lizard is a "killercraft" (i.e. fighter/bomber) pilot, who loves shooting down the comparatively slow and weak human aircraft and bomb the living shit out of humans. When he's finally killed by [[spoiler:a nuke exploding nearby]], his last words are "Not fair!"
** In the final book in the series, when humanity sends ambassadors to the Race's home planet, and some mice (brought along as food tasters) get released, causing ecological damage, which makes the Race throw a fit. The Americans point out that the mice were released by accident (by a member of the Race, no less), but the Race had absolutely no problem importing their own flora and fauna to Earth, to the point of completely changing the ecology of some regions (primarily around the Middle East). Their response to this is "That's different, because we're the ones who did it."
** This, naturally, happens in reverse too. A secret attack by [[spoiler:Americans]] destroys several colonization ships of the Race with thousands of peacefully-[[HumanPopsicle sleeping]] colonists aboard. Sam Yeager, one of the series' focus characters, exposes the truth because he found the attack distasteful and cowardly[[note]]explicitly calling it worse than Pearl Harbor because the colonists were civilians[[/note]], and the Race retaliates by nuking [[spoiler:Indianapolis]]. Because of his actions, Yeager gets treated like the next Benedict Arnold by pretty much everyone except for his small circle of friends and family; the general attitude is that he should have followed SpeciesLoyalty and MyCountryRightOrWrong rather than any sense of fairness or honesty.