On which is worse, dying or not saying things?

"Yes, specifically people can and have decided to risk their lives to address problems like 'not being allowed to say things'. - uh, it might be that you're imagining the government asks people to kindly not say some thing, and I'm imagining people who say the things being kidnapped in the night and shot."

- okay, that government is bad, but because of the killing people. If they said that and everyone listened and they did not kill anyone then that would be less bad than people dying.

"- if they didn't kill anyone because no one broke the law, or because that wasn't on the books as punishment for breaking laws?"

I am not sure I know what you mean. Either of those seem more similar to each other than to the case where people are killed, though.

"I think there's a difference between not doing something to - be polite, or whatever it is that motivates people in Valinor to shut up on command - and not doing something because if you do you will be executed."

Yes. There's definitely a difference. But it's... smaller than the difference between being erased forever and not erased forever.

"Maybe it seems like that if you're immortal by default or something."

Maybe. Are there countries that do that right now?

"Probably, I didn't exactly study all the world governments yesterday in preparation for explaining them to aliens but it seems likely."

Ugh. Not this one, though?

"The one I live in doesn't have that. Same document that gives us all the trouble about guns also includes a bit where we have freedom of speech! You still can't, like, libel people or yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. We are currently in Canada, which I think isn't as constitutionally hardline about it but broadly similar in practice."

They'll shoot you for libeling people? That is still excessive.

"- no they don't shoot you for libeling people. The shooting people for saying stuff is, like, characteristic of regimes in which speech is heavily restricted. Which this country and mine are not."

Oh good. Okay. 

"Sorry, didn't mean to overstate."

It's just hard to tell what's unreasonable when everything about the world seems awfully unreasonable. It's also hard that - you seem lovely, it really doesn't seem like you-in-the-aggregate shoot people for saying things.

"- restate that second part?"

If you'd told me I was going to run into aliens who routinely end up with governments that shoot people, I would expect those aliens to also be, individually, more violent or unbothered by bad things happening or threatening towards strangers. But you and your sister are both - you would not be unusual among the Noldor, I don't think, certainly not by enough to explain the large-scale awfulness.

"I mean, I like to think I'm a particularly good example, but - it's a lot of little things that add up, more than it is a handful of monsters? We have our handful of monsters but they get traction from everyone else having - lots of little things that add up."

I guess maybe I am not equipped to notice little things that would add up. Or maybe we have them too but in paradise they - don't add.

"Maybe. I'm still sort of suspicious but I guess it's possible that you're just actually proof of concept for totalitarians governing - uh - I don't have a nice word, the connotations are all screwed up for historical reasons."

What are you suspicious of exactly?

"If I saw a movie, where there were friendly aliens who never had serious problems in their paradise because their gods told them what to say and do, the plot of the movie would be all about sinister problems in that paradise, lurking. I think there's a Star Trek episode like this but you've already ruled out 'people are being executed'..."

Yes, only one person has died and not come back. I suppose Lórien could be meddling with people but I do not think he is doing that.