If it had been my daughter, I would have gotten involved. Risk vs reward to me, basically. There are things worse than death, and knowing that I stood aside while my hypothetical daughter was raped is one of them. Standing aside while its a hypothetical stranger? Not so much. By the way, I tend to find specific hypothetical situations very useful in a discussion like this, simply because it cuts out most of the ambiguity present in any discussion due to word perception when you're discussing complex, general concepts like this. See our my response about what is a sociopath as an example of my point.
I wasn't saying that selflessness and empathy are only Judeo-Christian values, only that they are heavily emphasized in Judeo-Christian cultures, which are pretty much all English-speaking countries. Thus, it applies to pretty much everyone in this thread and yourself, which influences the writing of the story.
I disagree that "every society encourages them." While technically true, it's the degree a society promotes them that matters. In Judeo-Christian cultures, selflessness and empathy are pretty exclusively seen as a positive and there's really no trait that's emphasized as much, except perhaps faith. In other cultures, things like bravery, viciousness, rigid politeness, etc. are prized more.
I don't think you wrote Alex to be perfectly moral, it's just that I think she is moving more and more towards the extremely selfless end of the scale. As I said before, I find extreme selflessness as repulsive as extreme selfishness. That said, I'm well aware that this is your story and that our views on this differ. I just had to attempt to sway you to my views since I want my enjoyment of the rest of the series to continue.
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Re: Empathy and selfishness
Date: 2012-09-11 03:30 am (UTC)I wasn't saying that selflessness and empathy are only Judeo-Christian values, only that they are heavily emphasized in Judeo-Christian cultures, which are pretty much all English-speaking countries. Thus, it applies to pretty much everyone in this thread and yourself, which influences the writing of the story.
I disagree that "every society encourages them." While technically true, it's the degree a society promotes them that matters. In Judeo-Christian cultures, selflessness and empathy are pretty exclusively seen as a positive and there's really no trait that's emphasized as much, except perhaps faith. In other cultures, things like bravery, viciousness, rigid politeness, etc. are prized more.
I don't think you wrote Alex to be perfectly moral, it's just that I think she is moving more and more towards the extremely selfless end of the scale. As I said before, I find extreme selflessness as repulsive as extreme selfishness. That said, I'm well aware that this is your story and that our views on this differ. I just had to attempt to sway you to my views since I want my enjoyment of the rest of the series to continue.