More re: Heart of Flesh/Heart of Stone. Optimism, empathy and ethics

[pegkerr]

Lots and lots of comments on my last point. Um, where to start. I'm going to try to answer some of the comments and articulate a little bit better exactly what I'm getting at with this metaphor of "heart of flesh/heart of stone." I plunge into these explanations with trepidation, sure that I'll mess up again. Bear with me. I'll do my best.

I didn't mean to imply that magdalene1's vision of His and Her future was superior to awatson's (parodied) vision because magdalene1's was more hopeful or optimistic or idealistic.

I didn't always see that so clearly. I used to make the mistake--and I really do think it was a mistake--to think that optimism was morally superior. This caused me a great deal of anguish over the years until I got this straightened out in my own mind. Bad enough to struggle with chronic depression. It's even worse if you get down on yourself, and see yourself as a moral failure, because you see things in a gloomy way.

If this optimism/pessimism scale is what cakmpls was referring to by arguing that there is no intrinsic superiority between one way of looking at the world and the other, then yes, I agree.

I also think that people who have what I call the heart of flesh can certainly be pessimistic.

cakmpls also said I don't believe that there are hearts of flesh and hearts of stone. I think that there are simply people with different needs.

Well, yeah, I don't believe it literally, of course. I meant it as a metaphor. Let me try to pin down a little better what I meant.

As I understand it, People with a heart of flesh may be impervious to hurt because of a natural resiliency or very sensitive to hurt. The key is, they open themselves up to the possibility of being hurt. They are also open to the possibility of joy, too, in a way that those with hearts of stone are not. They allow themselves the whole range of human emotion, both joy and anguish. People with a heart of stone decide (unconsciously or not) that they don't to risk the ridicule of the world, or they don't want to feel pain.

I think that a large part of the reason why is that they refuse to feel empathy.

Let me point you to a passage from a book that I think gets at this directly, Tim Powers' Dinner at Deviant Palace. The hero of the book, Greg Rivas, begins the book as a cynical man with a heart of stone. He was hurt in love years ago, and the experience was so painful that he never wants to go through anything like that again. Now he feels, the hell with the rest of humanity. He is hired to snatch back from a cult leader the girl whose family rejected him years ago. In the course of the journey he makes through the book, getting closer and closer to the cult leader, actually a totally egotistic alien, he is wounded again and again. He encounters people on his journey, and those encounters teach him something he had forgotten about entirely: empathy. At the climax of the book, the alien cult leader, recognizing a kindred spirit, invites Greg to join him in running his kingdom:

As to the question of why you--my dear fellow you, you underestimate yourself! I learned something from you, too, during our brief psychic linking. Why, in all my travels, I swear to you, never have I encountered such a fellow soul! Confess, confess--you too find other entities interesting only to the extent that they might give you pleasure or hindrance. Like me you consume with greedy haste everything you can get from them, and are indifferent to what might become of them afterward; you are in fact sickened by the sight of them, like being forced to linger over the chilling, congealed remains of a dinner! And like me, your real focus of attention, shorn of peripheral poses and pretences, is the one thing, the only thing, worth an eternity of regarding--yourself! You and I understand each other perfectly, boy. We could, without having to simulate any affection for each other, help each other considerably. We don't merge with anybody, boy. We consume. You and I are always distinct, undiluted, individual. Quanta rather than arbitrary segments of a continuum." Jaybush laughed sharply. "We're two of a kind."

Rivas stared across the deck table at the fat smiling face and knew that no one had ever understood him so thoroughly....

"I'm afraid," Rivas said . . . "that I'm going to refuse."

"Are you sure, boy? Tell papa why."

Rivas downed the remainder of his tequila and refilled the glass. "Well," he said almost comfortably, sure now he would never leave Deviant's Palace alive and that nothing he could say would change anything, "because of a . . . a bald boy who died on a garbage heap. And a pile of old stove parts [a robot Rivas met on his travels] that died on a glass plain. And a murdering pimp who evoked, and died out of, loyalty. And a whore with a sense of justice. Am I boring you? And because of Sister Windchime, who has compassion, though you've tried hard to stamp it out of her. And because the hard selfish part of Greg Rivas is swimming around in a canal someplace."

What changed was that Rivas discovered empathy with other people. Because people who guard their hearts of flesh can feel, they can feel connection with others. I prefer magdalene1's rooting for Him and Her, over awatson's (parodic) narrator, who found pleasure in wishing them misery. And yeah, I agree, magdalene1's picture of a bright future for Him and Her might not match theirs at all. They might hate kids, and want to run away to live in Tibet in a poly trio with a third person. Whatever. What was significant to me was that she wanted the best for them, whatever it was. She wanted them to be happy, because happiness mattered to her.

Those with what I call hearts of flesh can be pessimists. Frodo thought his mission was doomed, he despaired throughout the quest, but he kept on going because he knew that laying down his life for others was right. Was he a fool? The world may say so.

Certainly those with hearts of stone can be very happy. I'm sure Hitler loved his dog and enjoyed opera and got great pleasure out of the vast ampitheaters he built and the lovely machinery of death he dreamed up. I would rather be Anne Frank who near the end of her life said that in spite of everything, she still believed that people were really good at heart--and who died in a concentration camp at fifteen.

Yes, as cakmpls says, states of mind such as optimism or pessimism can be morally neutral. But states of mind, of understanding the world, lead to actions, and I don't believe that all actions are equally morally neutral. I also believe that intentions that lead to those actions can be judged.

Is it dangerous error to speak of "hearts of stone"? Is this metaphor hopelessly simplistic? Perhaps. But there's something, something there, with real moral implications for me. If what I call a stony heart leads a person to commit a moral wrong, the ethical must condemn them. But conversely, those with hearts of flesh will continue to reach out to those with stony hearts, trying out of empathy to make a connection that may save both. Think of Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, two women on opposite sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland, who each refused to believe that other had only a heart of stone and reached out to one another, empathizing with the other's pain, creating a movement that won the Nobel Prize.

I understand and agree with what cakmpls is saying about that she has a richer life when she uses binocular vision. I believe (if I remember correctly) that cakmpls has also objected to my trying to "tell no lies and of the truth all I can." What is truth, in a relative world? How is your truth better than mine?

Perhaps it is more helpful to think of what Galadriel said to Frodo, when he started to realize the enormity of the Quest, and what he was being asked to do and yet decide to do it anyway: "You begin to see with a keen eye." Yes. That is what I want. I don't deny that things may turn out badly, as awatson points out. But I want to also see the possibility of hope. I want to operate from the assumption that I don't to cut myself off from pain or joy, both mine or other people's. I want to make my decisions ethically. I believe that some things are right and some are wrong. If I try to be aware of other peoples' points of view as well as my own, I think I will choose those right courses of action more reliably than not.

That, I guess, is what I mean, by having a heart of flesh.

Comments

[kishmish.livejournal.com]

Beautiful entry. I have a friend I've been thinking about lately and your entry sheds some light on why he is the way he is. Thank you.