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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (3263)	11/9/2000 12:26:10 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

I certainly agree with you about empathy. A funny little aside. I wonder if telepathy would make us more empathic or less? If we could read each others minds we would see hurtful things there- or at least we would if we could suddenly read each others mind TODAY. But would we train ourselves not to think hurtful things, just as we train ourselves not to say hurtful things? And if we did not think hurtful things, would that make us even more empathic? Is there a feedback loop in there? I've been watching too much Star Trek again. But you started it with the eye thing.

To: Solon who wrote (3263)	11/9/2000 4:35:36 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Some of the most prolific murderers in history had high I.Q.'s--but no empathy for others. That's so funny that you should say that. That line was obscured on my 800x600 laptop, but I was going to point out the most prolific murderers were very intelligent. I was going to mention Ted Bundy -- then I paged down to see the rest of your post. Stupidity is of many kinds. I've seen some really intelligent people that are blind to some major social compensation mechanisms (that are frequently grouped as "common sense" or "common decency"). Compassion requires the ability to project one's ego into another's situation. If their situation is complex I think it requires intelligence for real compassion. I've had these types of discussion with people who refuse to see that some people in society are given a completely different set of parameters to work from and yet, they want to hold them accountable to some set of middle-class values that is totally irrational considering where they've been and the environment in which they were raised. I've captured feral cats and even tamed one. At 8 weeks it was wild and fierce. It bit and clawed as if I was a real threat - I caught it in a clothes basket. I couldn't imagine a less "civilized" animal. But eventually it became a pretty good cat. It had to unlearn a lot. But it was always a bit wild and was a very good "mouser". It's favorite game was "fight" where I donned a pair of leather motorcycle gloves and it would have a no-holds-barred attack on my gloved hands. It knew this game wasn't played without my gloves and it never went after my bare forearms. But it loved to play really, really rough. I mean I'd rub its fur the wrong way, hold it down, roll it across the floor, and it would come back hissing, but never attack anything but the gloves. But as soon as the gloves came off it knew the game was over and would go back to being a cat. I had to get rid of it after about a year because the apartment had a no pet rule and it had developed the habit of waiting for me to get home in the front window. It was adopted by a little girl who was the daughter of a friend of my mother's. She really liked it and it lived a long time with her. But nobody could stop it from hunting mice. It never bit or scratched her either.