![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm re-reading the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch (as one does, they're a marvelous socially-conscious police procedural featuring a mixed-race protagonist and magic, if you haven't read them you should). And one of the things that strikes me, as I re-read, is how clearly Peter and Lesley is an example of the common mistake of believing that your friends think like you do and have similar values. That because they're nice to you, they're a nice person in general. That because you do stuff together, they have the same morals and values and outlook as you do. (This is going to have spoilers for Broken Homes, by the way, but since it's four years old I'm not cutting for spoilers.)
This is an incredibly common thing, and it's why people don't believe that their friend could be a racist/rapist/homophobe/whatever. If you believe that a good person couldn't possibly believe/do X, and you believe your friend is a good person, then they couldn't possibly believe/do X. (Without ever considering that maybe they have a different opinion on whether X is good or bad.) And so any evidence to the contrary is laughed off as a joke or they don't really mean it or they're not that bad. Because you like them, so they must be a good person, and you think good people can't believe/do X, so therefore they can't believe/do X, no matter how much evidence you get to the contrary.
Until something happens that is so big that it can't possibly be explained away as anything but "yeah, they really have seriously been believing/doing X this whole time."
Peter is very, very conscious of the possibility of police brutality, of abuse of power. He knows exactly how necessary it is that police do the right thing, because he knows how much death, destruction, and injustice can result when they don't. Sure, caring about peoples' rights may make the job harder, but Peter would never accept that as an excuse to trample over them. He jokes about police brutality all the time--but it's a razor-sharp edge of irony, a this is what we must never be, a reminder of what the right way to be a copper is. It's not a "oh, well, in the good old days ..." wish to go back to that. Maybe it's because he's mixed race, the child of an immigrant who grew up working class and always has to factor racism into everything he does. Maybe it's because he's a genuinely good and honest person. It doesn't really matter why, but the point is, this understanding of justice, the law, and the absolute need for police integrity is fundamental to his ideas of what it means to be a good person, much less a good copper. And therefore he assumes that other people around him that he likes shares those ideals. Nightingale doesn't, not really, but he's willing to be persuaded; he can see the inherent justice and goodness of Peter's position and is willing to be persuaded. Left to his own devices, he would choose expediency; but not because he thinks it's good or right, just because it's habit. So Peter can assume they share this fundamental understanding because Nightingale will act as if they do, and possibly even internalize Peter's morals on this issue.
Lesley is a whole different ball of wax. She always argues for expediency. She believes that might makes right. She always argues against the rights and protections of ordinary people. She always, consistently, takes the more violent, more aggressive, more invasive option, and if someone gets hurt because she chose to do so, it is fundamentally their fault for getting in her way. If you can do something, in her belief system, you should do it. If you have power it is right to use it. More than that, she calls Peter stupid or thick when he doesn't. And Peter just goes along with it, assuming that things are jokes or just little or whatever, and yeah, of course she calls him thick because she's smarter than him and a better copper, right? So of course she must really agree with him deep down. He doesn't get that when she calls him thick when they're arguing about how to go forward, it's not because he's distracted or less smart than she is, it's because she genuinely believes that his morals are stupid. Lesley believes from the get-go that you have to be stupid to seriously believe Peter's ideals.
And, eventually, she betrays Peter and Nightingale and the Metropolitan Police because she found someone stronger, who could get her what she wanted: her face back. It requires her to betray her friends and colleagues, and throw in with a guy she knows for a fact is a serial killer. But he's the one who has the power to do what she wants, and he is the one who is truly living out her philosophy of life, and so she does it.
And Peter gets blindsided by it, not because Lesley is a particularly good liar, but because it never occurred to him that someone he liked and respected might have such a totally different view of the world, and so he ignored every hint to the contrary.
(Also. Re-reading Broken Homes, I am struck by how hard Lesley works to avoid being in the room with Peter while they're undercover at Skygarden. She's already made her decision by that point, I think.)
This is an incredibly common thing, and it's why people don't believe that their friend could be a racist/rapist/homophobe/whatever. If you believe that a good person couldn't possibly believe/do X, and you believe your friend is a good person, then they couldn't possibly believe/do X. (Without ever considering that maybe they have a different opinion on whether X is good or bad.) And so any evidence to the contrary is laughed off as a joke or they don't really mean it or they're not that bad. Because you like them, so they must be a good person, and you think good people can't believe/do X, so therefore they can't believe/do X, no matter how much evidence you get to the contrary.
Until something happens that is so big that it can't possibly be explained away as anything but "yeah, they really have seriously been believing/doing X this whole time."
Peter is very, very conscious of the possibility of police brutality, of abuse of power. He knows exactly how necessary it is that police do the right thing, because he knows how much death, destruction, and injustice can result when they don't. Sure, caring about peoples' rights may make the job harder, but Peter would never accept that as an excuse to trample over them. He jokes about police brutality all the time--but it's a razor-sharp edge of irony, a this is what we must never be, a reminder of what the right way to be a copper is. It's not a "oh, well, in the good old days ..." wish to go back to that. Maybe it's because he's mixed race, the child of an immigrant who grew up working class and always has to factor racism into everything he does. Maybe it's because he's a genuinely good and honest person. It doesn't really matter why, but the point is, this understanding of justice, the law, and the absolute need for police integrity is fundamental to his ideas of what it means to be a good person, much less a good copper. And therefore he assumes that other people around him that he likes shares those ideals. Nightingale doesn't, not really, but he's willing to be persuaded; he can see the inherent justice and goodness of Peter's position and is willing to be persuaded. Left to his own devices, he would choose expediency; but not because he thinks it's good or right, just because it's habit. So Peter can assume they share this fundamental understanding because Nightingale will act as if they do, and possibly even internalize Peter's morals on this issue.
Lesley is a whole different ball of wax. She always argues for expediency. She believes that might makes right. She always argues against the rights and protections of ordinary people. She always, consistently, takes the more violent, more aggressive, more invasive option, and if someone gets hurt because she chose to do so, it is fundamentally their fault for getting in her way. If you can do something, in her belief system, you should do it. If you have power it is right to use it. More than that, she calls Peter stupid or thick when he doesn't. And Peter just goes along with it, assuming that things are jokes or just little or whatever, and yeah, of course she calls him thick because she's smarter than him and a better copper, right? So of course she must really agree with him deep down. He doesn't get that when she calls him thick when they're arguing about how to go forward, it's not because he's distracted or less smart than she is, it's because she genuinely believes that his morals are stupid. Lesley believes from the get-go that you have to be stupid to seriously believe Peter's ideals.
And, eventually, she betrays Peter and Nightingale and the Metropolitan Police because she found someone stronger, who could get her what she wanted: her face back. It requires her to betray her friends and colleagues, and throw in with a guy she knows for a fact is a serial killer. But he's the one who has the power to do what she wants, and he is the one who is truly living out her philosophy of life, and so she does it.
And Peter gets blindsided by it, not because Lesley is a particularly good liar, but because it never occurred to him that someone he liked and respected might have such a totally different view of the world, and so he ignored every hint to the contrary.
(Also. Re-reading Broken Homes, I am struck by how hard Lesley works to avoid being in the room with Peter while they're undercover at Skygarden. She's already made her decision by that point, I think.)
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 12:09 am (UTC)From:I've seen a suggestion that she betrays Peter (and everyone else) because she was corrupted by Mr Punch, but I think it's more likely that Mr Punch chose her because she already had that ruthless streak. But you can also see why Peter likes her so much, because she's funny and brilliant, and they're working in a culture which rewards her brilliance more than Peter's less flashy dogged curiosity.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 03:54 am (UTC)From:So especially when they're both lowly PCs, her kind of take-no-prisoners, full-steam-ahead, figure-out-what-needs-to-be-done-and-do-it attitude is a much better fit. It's not that she necessarily has a higher IQ, I don't think, but that she's really focused on the practical aspects of the job and doing them well. A matter of getting all of ones mental abilities working together in the right direction instead of going off in a lot of different ways all at once.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 07:59 am (UTC)From:Quite apart from Peter's ethics, he has much stronger connections to people outside the Folly, and right at the time he was getting more connections, not losing the ones he already had. And he's not ambitious in the sense of power, though he is in the sense of knowledge. If he was to be corrupted, it would be an entirely different method - perhaps a benevolent dictatorship kind of arrangement, where he could help people by taking just a little of their free will.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 05:35 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 08:43 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 01:18 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 03:32 pm (UTC)From:I know the canon from fandom hosmosis but haven't read past the first book... but it doesn't really matter, because the meat of your post isn't about the book, really. This is a very articulate way of spelling out a thing many people struggle with I think.
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 05:36 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-07 05:38 am (UTC)From:I don’t think it’s always true that we deceive ourselves regarding our friends; I know full well what some of them are capable of (they’re not genocididal racists like the Faceless Man, of course, but they ARE Slytherin. ;)
no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 05:37 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-11-09 06:14 am (UTC)From:Yes, that sounds right. Our reflection and the experience can overcome that...sometimes, in some, I suppose.
Sent from my iPhone