Ender's Game on love and understanding

From a recent comment from the post about the Ender's Game quote:

This is actually one of my favorite quotes. If you haven't read the other books, you should. I've only read to Xenocide, but they're fantastic.

This quote makes a lot of sense. ...Sometimes, I accidentally profile people. I have a knack for knowing when something is "off," and by intuitive leap I've identified a few socios and a neurotypical or two who were waiting for someone to see behind the mask. Usually I'm clueless as to what makes a person tick, but when this thing happens, I am terrifically accurate. And I love them. The way them love themselves. Deeply, instinctually. It isn't empathy, but it is understanding. And oh, how I could destroy them. For me there's a fine line between love and the desire to destroy. They go hand in hand. Knowing someone in this way makes me love them, and loving them makes me want to break them. Ruin them. Possess them. When I love someone, I want their soul. Love, of course, is the reason I take care of them instead. But yes, knowing someone well enough to love them makes it possible to destroy them so completely they, for my own purposes, become essentially a non-entity.

Another quote, Ender talking about the Hive Queen:
"I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. Either way, I was tired of fighting. So I blew up her planet."

And one more:
"You are the one human being who is capable of understanding the alien mind, because you are the alien mind; you know what it is to be unhuman because there’s never been any human group that gave you credentials as a bona fide homo sapien."

I think most of us here can relate to that one, just a little bit. 

Human purpose

This was an thought provoking comment from an old post:

being a sociopath can be incredibly beneficial, and most of us are smart enough to react properly and "empathetically" to most situations, as long as we choose to be inherently good and exercise any amount of willpower over our actions we become capable of pretty great things, the lack of guilt or shame and general quick wit and flamboyance that we often exude is great for attracting a wonderful spouse with whatever qualities you choose to seek if family is something we choose to pursue. if not we can turn those same traits and find success in business and advertising and marketing with ease, we make pretty good managers and business owners as we never have to worry about emotions clouding our judgement, this generally avoids issues with depression and fortifies us against things like PTSD, heartbreak, or emotional stress. by no means are we evil, and we did not choose to be wired like this, its only natural for a creature to play to its strengths and use what resources it has at its disposal to attain comfort and success and advance for personal gain then reproduce with a suitable mate. at our very core this is the greatest purpose any human has managed to achieve so far and we just go about it a little differently. the truth is if a climatic event were to happen tomorrow, and society were to collapse I believe sociopaths would have the greatest chance of survival in a more...natural environment. this is probably why were still such a common occurrence, and may even eventually become the norm for the human species. most "empaths" are afraid of sociopaths to some degree, and regard us as dangerous but we aren't afraid of them, think long and hard about what that says about how this food chain is working. last I checked, the lion isn't scared or wary of the antelope and the wolves do not steer clear of deer. and really I could keep going for hours with every metaphor on the planet but the point is whatever differences we have in our genetics we all still exhibit free will and are all still in control of, and accountable for our actions. we are what we choose to be, whether our heartstrings are capable of being plucked or not. and no intelligent creature should forget that.

There were a lot of possibly controversial points made, but the one that stuck out to me most was "its only natural for a creature to play to its strengths and use what resources it has at its disposal to attain comfort and success and advance for personal gain then reproduce with a suitable mate. at our very core this is the greatest purpose any human has managed to achieve so far".

Perils of the well-intentioned

I don't like people who are good-intentioned, they are some of the most unpredictable and scary people I know. Once I visited a city that was renowned for its "nice" people. Driving there was a nightmare. Instead of behaving appropriately (and thereby predictably), they would go out of their way to "accommodate" other drivers, often leading to dangerous situations in which no one knew what was going on or who had the right of way.

One day on this most recent trip I was at the mercy of a well-intentioned driver. I was staying out in the countryside with some friends. To get anywhere, we had to rent a taxi. I needed to go into the city to run some errands so I called a cab. On the 40 minute ride into the city, my friend who more or less spoke the native language (expat from home, but of the same ethnicity) translated to me that the driver wanted the return fare, so offered to just drive us from place to place. I was fine with that and we went about our business, eating, shopping, and picking up stuff for the next few days. We told the cab driver to be on a look out for an ATM for my bank -- an international bank with many ATMs in the center of the city, but not out where we were staying. The reason I was so determined to go to my ATM was I had a special account that didn't charge me any foreign fees at all if I used their ATMs, whereas another ATM would charge me their fee plus my bank's fee, plus an additional 3% to my bank and I wanted to take out a large sum of money.

I needed to get money that trip because I needed local currency to pay the cab driver. He knew as much from my friend explaining that to him. We never passed an ATM during our errands, but we did pass by one on a side street just as we were leaving downtown. We told our cab driver to turn left, but he hesitated too long, then thought it too difficult, and continued driving, assuring us that there were plenty of my bank's ATMs on the route home that would be on the right side of the street -- we wouldn't have to go out of our way and could keep the fare down. We showed him the logo on my bank card just to be sure he understood and he said that he was 100% certain that there would be an ATM for my bank on the way home. I didn't insist on going back to the ATM because I wanted to believe him, and I didn't want to insult my friend, who the previous evening had been deriding all of the other expats who treat the natives as second class citizens in their own country.

My friend trusted the cab driver because he was so good-intentioned (had "helped" us "not get ripped off" before with a local tradesman earlier in the day), and continued to relay messages to me about how we were "certain" to find an ATM, until suddenly the cab driver wasn't certain at all.

After about 20 minutes of driving when we were about to leave the outskirts of the city, the cab driver started trying to get me to use any ATM we passed. I hated him by then. He apparently knew by that time that he had made a mistake and didn't want to bear the consequences of it by not being paid in his preferred form of local currency. I insisted that we keep trying to find my bank. I was angry, I told my friend to tell him that while he was "saving" us a pittance with the local tradesman, he was costing me roughly the cost of that long cab ride or more in fees. Plus I was "certain" that there was an ATM right by my friend's house, something the cab driver vehemently denied, although I turned out to be right.

It wasn't the money, of course. If we had never seen that ATM from my bank on the way out, I would have gladly paid the additional fees for the convenience of using another ATM. I was mainly angry because I had trusted the cab driver in a half-heated attempt to be agreeable.

I should have realized that the cab driver's "helping" us meant that he was a well-intentioned person. I would have preferred a neutral cab driver, or even a crooked one over this guy -- someone whose self-interest would have made him go back to that first ATM so he would be sure he would get paid. Instead I got someone who presumed to know better than I did what was best for me. It's that presumption that I hate most. The good-intentioned think that they are being a sort of saint, when really they are just arrogant meddlers.

See also imperialism.

Song: Change your evil ways

I'm going to take a little winter break from posting (recycling old posts, intermittent posts, etc.).

But first, a song.


Interestingly, I always thought this song was about a truly evil person, like voodoo magic style evil or something? It turns out it is just about a woman who does not cook and clean for her man that way that he expects her to do, instead hanging out with her girlfriends Jeanie and Joan. I don't take the lyrics as suggesting that she is literally "evil", but it is interesting to think about the extent to which the way we were socialized affects our understandings of right and wrong. See also Jonathan Haidt's work.

Delighting in the pains of others

“I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others; for let the affection be what it will in appearance, if it does not make us shun such objects, if on the contrary it induces us to approach them, if it makes us dwell upon them, in this case I conceive we must have a delight or pleasure of some species or other in contemplating objects of this kind”

-- Edmund Burke