#252424 - 25/03/2005 18:26
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: pgrzelak]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I want to decide who lives and who dies.
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Bitt Faulk
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#252425 - 25/03/2005 18:29
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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Hmmm... A little extreme. I was thinking about it more from the point of one random person. If you start healing everyone you meet, you start to generate attention and crowds...
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Paul Grzelak 200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs
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#252426 - 25/03/2005 18:37
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: pgrzelak]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote: If you start healing everyone you meet, you start to generate attention and crowds...
"Hey! I read about you! The one they call the American Messiah!"
Peter
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#252427 - 25/03/2005 18:54
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: pgrzelak]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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Quote: I was thinking about it more from the point of one random person. If you start healing everyone you meet, you start to generate attention and crowds...
And do you think one miraculous healing wouldn't draw attention, and violent at that ("You should have healed my son!")?
Perhaps you could get away with it once, but more than that and you probably aren't going to be able to keep your power a secret.
Let no good deed go unpunished.
Edited by JeffS (25/03/2005 18:55)
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#252428 - 25/03/2005 19:04
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: JeffS]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Who said it had to be dramatic? Why not make it so he could heal someone across the globe just by thinking about it?
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Bitt Faulk
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#252429 - 25/03/2005 19:16
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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Quote: Who said it had to be dramatic? Why not make it so he could heal someone across the globe just by thinking about it?
Well, he did say "touch", which would certainly be dramatic enough to garner attention.
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-Jeff Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
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#252430 - 25/03/2005 19:25
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: JeffS]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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Valid points. I was more thinking about elevator in a hospital / ICU / emergency room. Somewhere that a person rushing through and brushing against / bumping into someone would not be noticed by anyone, including the one healed. Same talent, different application. Trust me - drama or theatrics is the least thing I would want if I could do that.
This also addresses that "I decide who lives or dies" situation. It is quick, not necessarily making a choice for or against anyone based on any predispositions.
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#252431 - 25/03/2005 20:08
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: pgrzelak]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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Anybody read the 'Worthing Saga' by O.S. Card? It was the first book I read by him, in an out of print edition called 'Worthing Chronicles'. Anyway, the device used by Card in this story is that there are a group of telepaths who ease human suffering telepathically (make a recent death a distant memory, take away pain etcetera). Their progenitor (Worthing) is revived after millenia of being in suspended animation and makes them stop. Most of the book is back story explaining exactly why. Essentialy in the end the reasoning is boiled down to: "without suffering there can be no joy". An interesting read, and the 'healing at a distance' thought made me think of it. Has anybody else here read this? I'm not sure I agree with the full line of thinking, but it's an interesting theoretical question: if you could stop suffering, at what point is it wrong to do so? -Zeke
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#252432 - 25/03/2005 20:16
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: pgrzelak]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3584
Loc: Columbus, OH
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Then you invite the "Superman complex" where you feel guilty for the people you had the ability to save, but didn't.
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~ John
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#252433 - 25/03/2005 20:23
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: Ezekiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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Quote: Has anybody else here read this?
No, but it certainly sounds like Card from his books that I have read- I'm thinking of Speaker For The Dead. A different kind of issue, but still very weighty matters. Not my favorite read, but interesting.
Quote: if you could stop suffering, at what point is it wrong to do so?
I think it probably has to do with what your real goals are. If it is your real goal to end suffering, then probably you should use your power to the fullest extent. If your goal is to make people happy, you have to be more careful about it. There are many, many goals people have with regards to their fellow man.
It should come as no surprise that I personally would look toward Christ and what I believe his goals were. If He really could heal the lame and stop suffering (as I believe he could), then why didn't he heal everyone? People debate this of course, but my belief is that every miracle was performed in to demonstrate something of God's truth rather than to simply end suffering. Much more could be said about that (and argued), but I suppose the bottom line for me is that I'd use such a power as long as it revealed God's truth to others.
Of course, clearly other people would have other goals or patterns for how to use such a power. That is just mine.
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-Jeff Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
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#252434 - 25/03/2005 21:12
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: Ezekiel]
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old hand
Registered: 15/07/2002
Posts: 828
Loc: Texas, USA
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I've read most of Card's stuff including the Worthing saga. IIRC, the twist was that the telepaths had been doing the healing for so long that no one alive remembered what pain was like so when the telepaths stopped, there was a major backlash. Overall, I didn't enjoy it as much as the Ender and Alvin Maker series. I felt he was trying to make the point that there are "reasons that God doesn't intervene when he has the power to do so even if we don't understand them". A little too preachy for me. He had another story (Lost Boys) that did the same thing.
Regarding the puzzle box, my first thought was "Dinosaurs...big fecking dinosaurs, the human race needs some more predators running around to put things in perspective". Then the paranoia set in. "Who the hell else has one of these things?!? and I pushed the second button and all the boxes were gone that ever existed now or in the future. I wonder what historical figures would have done with such a device? Say if Ghandi, Oppenheimer, or Tesla were given their own 5 button box.
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#252435 - 25/03/2005 21:19
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: JeffS]
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journeyman
Registered: 02/04/2002
Posts: 56
Loc: Las Vegas
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Uh-oh, this is taking a religious turn. Quote: Valid points. I was more thinking about elevator in a hospital / ICU / emergency room. Somewhere that a person rushing through and brushing against / bumping into someone would not be noticed by anyone, including the one healed. Same talent, different application. Trust me - drama or theatrics is the least thing I would want if I could do that.
Pessimistic viewpoint: There are security cameras in hospitals, you know. Do that a few times and you get to spend your remaining life in a cell somewhere, forced to heal whatever ailing dictator the CIA wants to keep in power under threat of torture.
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#252436 - 25/03/2005 21:41
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: Mach]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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I've heard that the more Card wrote, the more he tried to infuse his writings with his Mormon faith, which is why it comes of preachy. I could be wrong about that, though. Ender's Game and Speaker for the dead both came off as pretty secular to me, though clearly Speaker had more of a preachy edge to it. In Ender he was really just trying to set up a character and not preach anything, and this seemed to work a lot better.
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-Jeff Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
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#252437 - 26/03/2005 01:00
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: JeffS]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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Worthing Chronicles was one of his earliest novels (1983), so the preachiness I think is more from lack of experience as an author. It was heady reading when I was 12 though! I think later on he manages to better segregate his faith from his writing, although I still think you can see it an almost all his works if you know to look. Personally I put Worthing Chronicles just behind Ender's Game in my ranking of Card books (which runs from pretty good/one step below Asimov to pure crap (Hart's Hope, Wyrms, the entire Homecoming series)).
-Zeke
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#252438 - 26/03/2005 01:05
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: JeffS]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
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OSC seems to have been a very sick fellow.. good stories, but.. about that preoccupation with children..
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#252439 - 26/03/2005 02:02
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: Ezekiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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Ender's Game is one of my favorite Sci-Fi novels ever. I think it's funny that he basically wrote it (or rather expanded a short story) to do nothing more but set up Ender's character for SFTD. In fact, origionally he was just going to do it as a foward to SFTD but he just couldn't jam the character development into so short a space.
Sometimes the by-product is better than the product itself!
Jeff
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-Jeff Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
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#252440 - 26/03/2005 02:03
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: Ezekiel]
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veteran
Registered: 21/01/2002
Posts: 1380
Loc: Erie, CO
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Quote: Personally I put Worthing Chronicles just behind Ender's Game in my ranking of Card books (which runs from pretty good/one step below Asimov to pure crap (Hart's Hope, Wyrms, the entire Homecoming series)).
Grr.. the Homecoming series was crap. I have this strange need to read a series through once I start and I suffered through it because I liked Ender's Game and the rest of that series. Good premise, not enough sci-fi though.
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#252441 - 26/03/2005 07:18
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: JeffS]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
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Agreed - I think that Ender's Game (the short story) is the best the guy ever wrote; SftD was good, but I could not make myself to wade through the rest (and my expectations were high based on the first encounter). I found the story in one of my all-time-favorute SF tomes, a locally-produced anthology also containing masterpieces like Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon and quite satisfying prose like McIntyre's Dreamsnake. Sigh, like too many of books from my library, I lent it to someone and it never came back...
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#252442 - 26/03/2005 15:45
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: bonzi]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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One of the best things I read recently (last few years) was reading Norton's Anthology of Short Fiction cover to cover. It took a while (and I have to admit I couldn't bring myself to read all of Faulkner's 'The Bear'), but it was so pleasant. 100% good stuff, no clunkers whatsoever.
-Zeke
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#252443 - 26/03/2005 16:20
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: Ezekiel]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
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Thank you for the pointer. I wasn't aware of this Norton series of anthologies and reference works; interesting one-stop-shop source. A bit expensive and Amazon does not ship second-hand stuff to Croatia, but I will try to find it elsewhere. Heh, browsing around I found another Northon anthology, The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (I don't like books with the word 'book' in their titles) edited by two of my favourite authors, Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler. It seems that most of the reviewers don't particularly appreciate their selection criteria
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#252444 - 26/03/2005 19:08
Re: An exercise from my Psychology class
[Re: bonzi]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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The Norton books are often used as textbooks in University, and, occasionally, high school, classes.
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Bitt Faulk
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