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the only thing i'm wandering right now is where the heck did u get that quote from? i may have said live ur life the way u want but i never said anything about sparta so where did u get that nonscence from?

1. You can edit quotes and 2. that's from 300.

i know that but nvm back to the topic

I agree that normal people may not think that werewolves are demons or evil creatures. But probably the discovery of werewolves will lead to the birth of new pseudo-religious sects adoring or imitating the way of life of werewolves. So I think that even if normal people may not be frightened by wws, the official religions and churches will tend to stress the fact that wws are a dangerous specie, and will depict them as demons or something like that, in order to keep control on their followers. This behaviour may lead to the creation of local organizations (also paramilitary, tolerated by official religions) whose goal is to "protect" normal people from wws and their relatives/followers.

To quote Agent K, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

In other words, while I agree that most people would not immediately presume werewolves are demons or otherwise inherently evil, the most common reaction at the exposure of werewolves would be something along the lines of "Holy crap! Holy crap! What do we do?! What do we do?!!"

The first person to respond that sounds like he might even have a clue about what he's talking about could easily convince hundreds, maybe even thousands, to support his cause. And you can bet the first people to comment will be the guys that give Christianity a bad name.

Fanatics of any religion, or for that matter, any political movement, social group, or belief, tend to be very dangerous and irrational. If they consider Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, Pokemon, and even herbal tea the marks of The Beast, you could count on your Jerry Falwells of the world to rise up and blast werewolves as demons. Likewise, if some of us have in our angry adulescence thought about how nice it would be as a werewolf to go on a killer rampage, you can only guess what would the next mal-adjusted "I hate rich people" student assassin would do. We're still getting over how much damage a kid with a gun did in Virginia; give one lycanthropy, and the horror movies about werewolves would look tame, holding back. Now that I think about it, I've really under-represented just how much bloodshed there would be. And, the fanatics on both sides would fan each other's flames.

That's another aspect we never discussed before (at least that I know of). We'd be bringing another potentially destructive power into the world if we somehow created lycanthropy. There's always the chance that it will be abused, so should we risk creating it at all?

Lycanthropy in today's society would be world-shaking. But, by the time technology makes it possible for us to engineer it, enough other things would have to have already been invented along the way, with their own impacts to medicine, philosophy, social outlook, religion, and daily living, that it could just be a niche novelty. Maybe some hundred years from now, there will be a discussion board about someone finally designing a lycanthrope virus that makes someone shift into a decent-looking werewolf with a tail, instead of all the crap already available.

That's an interesting take - I tend to think that once genetic manipulation and cosmetic surgery smash together (where a dragon in the niche could get wings and a tail - along with the ability to use them), real life might start resembling some areas of Second Life.

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Yet racism exists, has existed, and probably will continue to exist until everyone can learn to love everyone else. Until then it's an imposiblility to erradicate it.

You make a good point about angry teens and lycanthropy Scott, but that could be balanced out by the current need for werewolf anonymity -- one bad apple runs the risk of exposing the entire werewolf population to the mob.

No doubt in my mind, there would be angry kids that would want to be infected with lycanthropy so they could go on a rampage (heck, I know of plenty of therians like that already). The chances of a werewolf actually giving someone like that what they want, however, I think would be fairly slim.

The more likely breaking point I think would be not when some dumb kid slaughters his classmates in gestalt form, but when said kid is found murdered and the accused killer is another werewolf that was trying to stop him. If he was deemed competent to stand trial and/or his story was leaked to the press, that's when the Christian fanatics would take up their arms and the poser wiccans would flood eharmony.com with requests to meet a werewolf.