Eccentric Flower:201001/Me and Sam
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Me and Sam
Interesting observations here. Read it first. I'll wait.
I don't believe most people are good and decent (although I think they often try to be, or delude themselves that they are, or both). I don't believe most people are good and decent because I don't believe that I am intrinsically good and decent - I think that I'm someone who is desperately trying to do the right thing at all times, but only because I fear what would escape to the surface if I didn't. In terms of behavior, I am like an alcoholic who is trying as hard as I can to stay on the wagon.
Or, more succinctly, I am Sam Vimes.
I have no idea if this sensation is something a lot of other people have as well, or whether I'm just a freak. But I don't think I'm a good person. I think I'm a bad person trying not to be. I think I am trying to overcome my essential nature - and there's the crux: While I have no earthly idea how common this impulse to overcome one's nature is, I tend to assume that all of us, every one of us, has that selfish, brutish, nasty core within. In other words, we're all born evil; some of us manage to overcome it, with varying degrees of success.
(I don't necessarily hold myself up as one of the more successful cases. It helps to have places like the "Three Fantasies" entry where I can vent the evil parts of my brain harmlessly. I'd vent them in fiction, but that depresses me.)
Why do I think we're born evil? Strangely, it's not cynicism. I don't mean any particular condemnation by it. It's just biology. When we are born, we are perfect egomaniacs. Survival and gratification are our only goals. The world exists just for us, for our demands; there is no one and nothing else in the universe that is even remotely important to us. We just want everything we want and we want it now, and we won't listen to anyone who tries to tell us why we can't have it.
That is our base nature. Inside each and every one of us is a caveman bent on personal survival urges that date from an every-person-for-themselves, pre-tribal environment. Inside each and every one of us is a two-month-old infant. Inside each and every one of us is a megalomaniac.
But I don't let this get to me. I don't walk around under a black cloud because of it. I mean, it would be like cursing the darkness. It's just the way things are, it seems to me, and I'd rather be happy about the number of people who keep trying to overcome it and keep the social units of the world functioning. I'd rather be one of those people. When I can.
And I don't think any less of Lucy for her optimism. I don't think I'll ever manage to be that optimistic about people myself, but someone has to be.
Iain:
I thought you didn't like Discworld, for some reason.
Also, I suspect most people are born chaotic neutral -- aside from the ones where something goes wrong from the start, like a Bundy or a Gacy or the odd random dictator or some such -- and then it's all up to influence to see what happens. (...what? What? Hey, if a Dungeons and Dragons reference works, run with it!)
-- 17:22, 27 January 2010 (GMT)
Iain: I don't. Or, specifically, I tried reading some of the very early books, and I didn't like either the character Rincewind or the sense of humor in them. I hear they got better, but by then there were ten thousand of them and the mythology got too daunting. However, Dan has just about talked me into reading the three books with the Sam Vimes arc (titles above).
-- 17:37, 27 January 2010 (GMT)
There are actually more Vimes books in the series but I agree with Dan that those are the three best (I do like Feet of Clay as well). I first read the books out of order myself but you may want to avoid that.
Hadn't thought of it before but you do have a lot of Vimes-ish qualities, especially in the later books.
-- 17:57, 27 January 2010 (GMT)
My friend who has cancer is one of those people you would think is truly good. And maybe she is. When she talks to people, she really listens, and when she sees them again, she remembers that their mother had pneumonia or their youngest child has a learning disability or anything else, and she asks how their relative is doing, by name, even. I've always admired that quality in her and wished that I had it, as well. I'm lucky to remember the person's name in the first place, let alone their kids' names, etc. I'd have to consciously cultivate it, whereas I'm pretty sure she came by it naturally, or learned it at a very early age.
And yet, I've heard her say negative things about some of those people in the privacy of her home, and only to close friends or relatives. So, her public personna radiates goodness, but is it really goodness, or is it a form of hypocrisy?
In situations calling for opinions or perhaps false compliments, I find myself not saying anything or dissembling, rather than revealing what I really think. That seems more honest (good) to me than agreeing publicly, then muttering in private. So which one of us is the more "good?" I dunno. I do know that she has a vast support network of friends and relatives who would do anything for her, and she them. Her peers love her. Yeah, I guess she's the really "good" one. Sigh...
I'm a certified optimist ("Always look at the briiiiiiiight side of life," Yep, that's me.) I've always believed that the highs are worth the lows, perhaps because I myself have never experienced a truly low lowpoint. You'd think the death of my late husband at the tender age of 53 would qualify. But even then, I was able to be grateful that he didn't suffer, and the aftermath of such a vicious stroke could have been so much more deleterious in terms of quality of life (his, not mine) and my optimistic side won the day. I don't think that's naive or childish. It's just a better way to be, to my way of thinking, than to see negativity everywhere. I have a very cynical, less-trusting side, so I'm not sure my optimism extends to other people. The difference is, I guess, that I always HOPE they'll be as good as I wish them to be, while secretly knowing they probably aren't.
And yet, how do I reconcile this with constantly coming to the defense of those poor, hard-working, basically honest schlubs, the overworked, underpaid gummint employees? I'm always the first to say that the one or two miscreants give the rest of us a bad name. Hmmm... I'll have to ponder that some more.
-- 23:52, 27 January 2010 (GMT)
I think we're born absolutely selfish, in the sense that we are needy little blobs barely aware that other people exist. But before very long at all, we begin to develop empathy. Even as infants, if we see our parents fighting or our pets crying out in pain, it really upsets us... And it's not just that loud noise makes us fear for our own safety. That empathy eventually develops to the point where many of us are willing to sacrifice a little or a lot for the sake of others.
Even if you feel like at heart you are a selfish beast, that doesn't mean it's really as simple as that. If you were in the classic scenario where somebody you loved was trapped in a burning building, would you rush in to save them? You might think you know the answer, but you don't, not until it happens. Maybe you'd be just too afraid to act. Or maybe you'd hear them screaming in there, and it would be so awful you'd have to rush in, your own safety be damned. People who are pretty rotten in their daily lives can be selfless when the occasion demands, and people who do a lot of charity work can turn into monsters when shit gets grim. We're all mixed-up stews of good and evil, I think it's an oversimplification to say we're all secretly rotten and we just put on a nice face.
Besides, if you weren't a good person, why would you worry about suppressing your own dark side? If you were truly rotten, you'd just let yourself be rotten.
-- 02:51, 28 January 2010 (GMT)
Ursula makes a good point. I remember from time to time worrying that I might become a sociopath if I didn't keep an incredibly tight rein on myself. Then I realized that actual sociopaths never worried about becoming one.
You have to define what you mean by "evil." I've heard "lack of empathy," but I think that's too facile. For example, most animals lack empathy, but I think characterizing hamsters, for example, as "evil" reduces the term to meaninglessness. There has to be a capacity for empathy in the first place, which is then rejected, before "evil" can meaningfully be identified.
Thus, I think your characterization of infants as "evil" is simply wrong. They don't have the capacity for empathy; therefore, the most that can be said is that they are amoral. "Evil" does not imply amorality; it implies immorality.
I recognize that my definition lets sociopaths off the hook because they are hard-wired to not experience empathy. So perhaps a further tweak to the definition is necessary. I believe there are no bad thoughts, only bad acts. So even if one does not emotionally experience empathy, one can learn behaviors that mimic it. So how about this as a definition for evil, then: Evil exists in one who has the capacity to understand the kinds of acts that are consistent or inconsistent with empathy, and chooses to engage in such acts that are inconsistent.
-- 04:36, 28 January 2010 (GMT)
Andy:
My friends raved about Discworld so much that I figured I'd want to read all of them, so I should start with the first one. The Color Of Magic was actually hard to find at the time, and when I finally found it and read it, I was really disappointed in it. I then refused to read any more DiscWorld, as more and more of my friends raved about it, and I concluded that more and more of my friends had no taste. Finally someone said "he wasn't a good writer then; he got better", and got me Thief of Time as a present, and I thought it was terrific.
There is much less connection between books in the series than in most series. There are disconnected subthreads that you can see charted at http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/, but even within the threads, the later books contain hardly any spoilers for the earlier ones ((I can only think of one; read Guards, Guards! before any other Watch novels to avoid it), and tI've had zero problem with not knowing something I needed to know when reading a later book before an early one.
So don't read "Discworld novels" or "The Discworld series". Read "Thief of Time"; it's very funny.
-- 23:24, 5 February 2010 (GMT)
Andy:
My friends raved about Discworld so much that I figured I'd want to read all of them, so I should start with the first one. The Color Of Magic was actually hard to find at the time, and when I finally found it and read it, I was really disappointed in it. I then refused to read any more DiscWorld, as more and more of my friends raved about it, and I concluded that more and more of my friends had no taste. Finally someone said "he wasn't a good writer then; he got better", and got me Thief of Time as a present, and I thought it was terrific.
There is much less connection between books in the series than in most series. There are disconnected subthreads that you can see charted at http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/, but even within the threads, the later books contain hardly any spoilers for the earlier ones ((I can only think of one; read Guards, Guards! before any other Watch novels to avoid it), and tI've had zero problem with not knowing something I needed to know when reading a later book before an early one.
So don't read "Discworld novels" or "The Discworld series". Read "Thief of Time"; it's very funny.
-- 23:29, 5 February 2010 (GMT)
DanLyke:
Ya see, I think we're largely born "good". I think that "caveman bent on personal survival" understands that cooperation in bringing down the mammoth usually trumps fighting the other guy for a share of the meat that's just gonna spoil anyway.
Yes, survival and gratification are our only goals, but ya know how you make a 20 year old charge the enemy in the face of certain death? Tell him his community loves him. As SLA Marshall observed (in writing about how to get said 20 year old to do that), "more than life itself, we value the approval of our peers".
I think at some point I stopped believing in notions like "good" and "bad" and became a much happier person. I've replaced it with "what helps build a community that surrounds me with people whose company I enjoy". Not necessarily a big community, the importance of people in my life falls off pretty sharply as that circle expands, but expecting "good" and "bad" behavior, rather than just human behavior, was causing me no end of cognitive dissonance and grief.
And you really should read "Guards, Guards", "Men At Arms" and "Night Watch", in that order, and you don't have to read any of his farces or his Rincewind or anything else.
-- 17:14, 27 January 2010 (GMT)