This, that, and the argument against empathy. (ie. Spock vs. Troy)

[shadowkat]

1. Have decided to get Scrivener which their sales reps/tech support advised me is compatible with Yosemite on the Mac. So I don't need to buy a new Mac to get it. Although, I may have to get a new Mac at some point anyhow just to continue doing taxes. I've decided to see if Scrivener can help keep me better organized. I'm writing a sci-fi novel, it has a lot of world-building and minor/major details to keep track of. Scrivener seems tailor-made for that sort of thing.

At this point, I don't know if I'll publish it or not. Figure I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Madeline L'Engle provided some great advice on this subject. She said, ask yourself if you would write even if you had no hope of ever being published or having anyone read your work? Would you still write? The answer for me is a resounding yes. I don't write for others, never have. I write for me. It's not altruistic in the least. Although it can be used in that fashion.

2. Been watching the following lately:

* Once Upon a Time - which is quite enjoyable this season, more so actually than the last two seasons in some respects. In the first part of the season, we explored a twisty Camelot, with King Arthur as a villain and Emma Swan as the Dark One, except that was a bit of a mislead, in actuality the dark one turned out to be Hook in a nice twist.

In the second part of the Season, they've gone to hell to rescue Hook, who'd sacrificed himself to rid them of the Dark magic -- which actually just went back into Rumple again. Seriously they should have killed him when they had the chance, Belle be damned. Then again, how would they've made it to hell?

The series is exploring Rumple's character in a bit more depth, with some weirdly ambiguous, and somewhat dark moral undertones. This past episode seemed to suggest that he'd have been better off killing the wizard then making a deal with him. In a flashback, Baelfire gets bitten by a snake. They go to a local wizard for an antidote. But the Wizard will only sell it for 100 gold coins. Desperate, Mela tells Rumple to go back and steal the antidote and kill the Wizard. (Why she didn't decide to do it herself, I've no clue. Considering of the two of them, she's certainly the most capable.) Rumple goes back, but he just can't kill the Wizard (this is before he became the Dark One), so he makes a deal with him. He sells his second child to the Wizard in exchange for the antidote to save Baelfire. Mela is appalled by this deal and leaves Rumple for the sexy pirate, Hook, that she'd met in the Tavern. (I don't really blame her, I'd have left Rumple for the sexy pirate too.) Once Rumple becomes the Dark One, he goes back and kills the Wizard, thinking he's got out of the deal.

About a thousand or so years later, he's in Underbrook (Regina's nickname for the purgatory version of Storybrook) and low and behold -- Hades decides to strike a deal with him. In return for destroying the boat and throwing Mela into the river of lost souls, he can go home. He does it -- desperate to return to Belle. (All together now -- Belle? Leave this loser!) But, Hades being Hades chooses to backtrack on the deal -- because he now has leverage over Rumple. Turns out Belle is pregnant and the Wizard, whose dead, has assigned his contract with Rumple over to Hades. Now, Rumple's kid is Hades. Poor Rumple. I agree with Mela, he can be incredibly stupid. Although he does, technically, have another loophole -- Peter Pan aka Dear Old Dad who offered to give him a way home in exchange for trading places with one of the people Rumple had brought along with him. (Let's see, Emma, Regina, Snow and..Charming because he shares Snow's heart are all trapped in Underbrook anyhow. Hades had discovered a means of doing that. So that leaves Robin and Henry for Rumple to kick to the curb, in order to hitch a ride on Daddy's boat? Assuming that option is still available. It should be, seemed open ended without a precise timeline.)

What's odd though is the writers seem to be stating that Rumple would have been better off killing the Wizard instead of making a deal with him. Which, uhm...no. This is my difficulty with the Rumplestilskin storyline, he's a coward for not wanting to fight in a War? Not wanting to kill things.
He gets power and does kill things, but is evil. I think they are trying to explore the ambiguity behind fighting. Or the difference between fighting when you can't possibly win but doing it anyhow (ie Courage) and doing it when all the odds are in your favor and you can't possibly lose (ie Evil).

Anyhow, they've completely redeemed Regina and made her, Emma and Snow a sort of nifty team.

Hanging off on the side is another subplot, which may end up rebooting the series again. That's Cruella tempting Henry into rediscovering the magic quill and changing the story. The quill he destroyed is a living thing, so he can possibly find it in Underbrook and use it to change the past.
Which would effectively reboot the story. Just as long as it's not another curse.


2. The Good Wife

Becoming increasingly satirical as we go. Sort of glad this is the last season. Although I find Jason far more appealing as a romantic love interest...than anyone else they had paired her with.

This episode had some nice touches though - and I laughed quite a bit during it.

I think they are gearing up for Alicia to leave her husband. She really has no reason to stay with him. Both kids are heading off to college. And it works as a good end to the series - where she ceases being The Good Wife. I also think they'll have an all female firm at the end, which re-affirms the series mission statement -- which is about female empowerment, and gender politics.

The series really is about power on multiple levels.

3. Saw this weird post on Face Book...which makes me think of Star Trek, specifically Spock and Troy debating morality. I wonder if these psychologists ever watched Star Trek? Because Star Trek explored this ground long before they got around to it.

Argument Against Empathy" -- where a psychologist (god, who else?), argues that empathy from a moral standpoint is a bad thing.

And... HERE

Moral judgment entails more than putting oneself in another’s shoes. As the philosopher Jesse Prinz points out, some acts that we easily recognize as wrong, such as shoplifting or tax evasion, have no identifiable victim. And plenty of good deeds—disciplining a child for dangerous behavior, enforcing a fair and impartial procedure for determining who should get an organ transplant, despite the suffering of those low on the list—require us to put our empathy to one side. Eight deaths are worse than one, even if you know the name of the one; humanitarian aid can, if poorly targeted, be counterproductive; the threat posed by climate change warrants the sacrifices entailed by efforts to ameliorate it. “The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of empathy,” the psychologist Steven Pinker has written, “but it also owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness, self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights.” A reasoned, even counter-empathetic analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences is a better guide to planning for the future than the gut wrench of empathy.

Rifkin and others have argued, plausibly, that moral progress involves expanding our concern from the family and the tribe to humanity as a whole. Yet it is impossible to empathize with seven billion strangers, or to feel toward someone you’ve never met the degree of concern you feel for a child, a friend, or a lover. Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family—that’s impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

That’s not a call for a world without empathy. A race of psychopaths might well be smart enough to invent the principles of solidarity and fairness. (Research suggests that criminal psychopaths are adept at making moral judgments.) The problem with those who are devoid of empathy is that, although they may recognize what’s right, they have no motivation to act upon it. Some spark of fellow-feeling is needed to convert intelligence into action.

But a spark may be all that’s needed. Putting aside the extremes of psychopathy, there is no evidence to suggest that the less empathetic are morally worse than the rest of us. Simon Baron-Cohen observes that some people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, though typically empathy-deficient, are highly moral, owing to a strong desire to follow rules and insure that they are applied fairly.

Where empathy really does matter is in our personal relationships. Nobody wants to live like Thomas Gradgrind—Charles Dickens’s caricature utilitarian, who treats all interactions, including those with his children, in explicitly economic terms. Empathy is what makes us human; it’s what makes us both subjects and objects of moral concern. Empathy betrays us only when we take it as a moral guide.

Hmm, he reminds me of Mr. Spock in Star Trek...

Here's a counterpoint to Bloom's articles - which appear in the New Yorker, the Boston Review, and The Atlantic. The counterpoint is from Psychology Today - Why Paul Bloom is Wrong about Empathy and Morality.

To Bloom, empathy belongs only to the realm of the personal—how, for example, we treat our family and friends. But it has no role to play in moral judgment. Morality from this perspective isn't about the creature in front of you, it is about society as a whole. That is what morality looks like from a high-altitude bombing perspective.

We can certainly see all mankind as our family. The problem is that we don't. Volumes of psychological research (link is external) show that we show more empathy towards those who are like us than those who are not. The answer is not to scrub out empathy. The answer is to expand our empathy to include those who are not like us. That is what drove so many white Americans to argue for the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow laws, and the institution of civil rights.

The way that has worked best (link is external) is to point out the similarities between ourselves and those who are suffering—to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. Even though I do not look like you or act like you, nonetheless I am like you when it comes to the capacity for suffering, and so I deserve to be treated the same as you. It is precisely our ability to imagine the plight of the nameless and faceless that elicits our empathy and our desire to act. What diminishes one’s ability to empathize? Power over others (link is external): When people are primed to feel powerful, they display less empathy-related mirror neuron activity in their brains than when they are primed to feel powerless.

As a final admonition, Bloom warned “empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future”. Instead, it is the marriage of empathy to principle that has always been and will continue to be our salvation. It is our ability to generalize and to direct our empathy through the use of reason that is our saving grace. Without that, it is easy to create a holocaust, a crusade, or a jihad.

I think she's right. The answer is not to jump to the opposite extreme, but to combine the two. Human beings are such extremists.

I wonder if Dr. Bloom has watched any Star Trek? Star Trek was about a race that had turned off their ability to feel empathy or emotion, but as Kirk points out to Spock, empathy and emotions are vital to our decision making. It can't be all rational thought. Although the above discourse is what I think a discussion about morality between De'lanna Troy (STNG) and Mr. Spock (OST) would sound like.