Robin Turner

*CHEER*

I'm glad I found your journal, and your posts in Philosophy have been appreciated.

The trick, of course, is how to explain the notion of compassion as an positive evolutionary habit, or even an individually helpful adaption. Forgive my snide contempt, but I try to console myself that the wannabe Nietzschean's and Randroids will give up their noise when they grow up and try to get a) a job and b) laid.

From:

Yes, it's surprising how few members of the opposite sex swoon into your arms when you quote Also Sprach Zarathustra at them ;-)

From:

The trick, of course, is how to explain the notion of compassion as an positive evolutionary habit, or even an individually helpful adaption.

I've seen info on this somewhere... beyond just the usual Buddhists' explanations.

...the wannabe Nietzschean's and Randroids will give up their noise when they grow up and try to get a) a job and b) laid.

Ha ha ha! *L* I don't doubt one bit that's probably true. Potential employers don't give a rat's ass about someone's personal philosophy; and dry, soulless beliefs aren't exactly sexy, are they? :)

From:

I don't know. Any woman who can talk Wittgenstein to me has me in the palm of her hand.

From:

"Hey, baby, you can swing my poker anytime..."

From:

Phwooaah!

BTW, have you read that book Wittgenstein's Poker? Great fun.

There again, the fact that I have just described a book about a debate between two Austrian philosophers as "great fun" would probably make most people who saw me at a party feel an irresistible urge to hurry off to the kitchen and sample the cheese dips.

From:

There again, the fact that I have just described a book about a debate between two Austrian philosophers as "great fun" would probably make most people who saw me at a party feel an irresistible urge to hurry off to the kitchen and sample the cheese dips.

Only the ones not interested in philosophy. :)

From:

I actually started to think about it when I read Piaget on child psychology. The fundamental attribute of empathy seems to be an requisite step in developing a formed adult sense of self. The extension from the awareness of another's emotional state to the desire to relieve their suffering seems pretty hard coded. I know that empathy and compassion shouldn't be conflated, but it's difficult for me to conceive of one without the other. Ken Wilber has put together the most compelling version of the "compassion as evolution" argument that I've seen, but he draws from a large number of disciplines.

From:

I remember hearing a lot about empathy when I listened to the audio book "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman. Fascinating stuff that is.

Ken Wilber has put together the most compelling version of the "compassion as evolution" argument that I've seen, but he draws from a large number of disciplines.
I've heard of Ken Wilber; haven't read anything by him yet. One thing that stuck in my mind is from when I watched the miniseries documentary Rome, Power & Glory. Apparently, compassion was in terribly short order and it was thought to be anti-Roman to show sympathy; however, there didn't seem to be much humor either. Whether it's hard-wired into us makes you ask what happened to it way back then, or was it just strongly supressed?

Can you imagine a world without any compassion or empathy?? *shudder*

From:

That reminds me of one of the last conversations I had with my father - he was explaining how Romans distinguished between clemency or mercy, which was informed by reason and therefore good, and compassion or pity, which was based on passion and therefore bad. It seems to be a case of the Romans' perversion of Stoicism into a cult of civic duty. OTOH, Marcus Aurelius was a bit of a bleeding-heart liberal.

They did have a sense of humour, though - look at Juvenal or Ovid.

From:

Passion a bad thing, huh? Or maybe misdirected passion?

I have a translated book on Marcus Aurelius titled "Meditations." He did seem to be much 'softer' than other emperors. He also said he thought there was a strong distinction between religion and philosophy... thought religion was mostly ceremonial and for the masses (to be handled by the clergy) and philosophy limited to those dedicated to higher intellectual thoughts and 'asking questions,' and that passage interests me greatly!

I'm sure SOME must have had a sense of humor, but that one documentary noted that humor in general was rather frowned upon. Maybe they didn't anyone laughing when someone got torn to pieces in the Colosseum!

From:

Well, by "hard-wired", I really meant was that the impetus for that behavior is inherent in human beings. It's not critical for the ongoing survivial of any one individual (like, say, breathing), and so an individual or large groups of individuals can repress or rechannel that impetus. The drive to reproduce is inate, but surpressable, and, IMO like compassion, if surpressed in large numbers of people, doesn't make for good long term species survival.

I'll have to dig through my neurophsych bookmarks, but if memory serves me, high environmental lead levels have been correlated with learning impairments at a very early age. It makes sense to me that one of the developmental processes that could be damaged is self/other differentation, and therefore a neurochemical surpresson of empathy/compassion. I could well be swinging at the bats there, though.

Thank you both for the ongoing discussion.

From:

chr0me-kitten.livejournal.com

Amen to that!

From:

I DIDN'T VOTE FOR GEORGE BUSH. I repeat: I DID NOT vote for G-Dubya-Moron!!!!!!!!!!

You're talking about my two cousins, the Republicans-or-Death organizers. ;) (just kidding!)

There are times I feel like breaking people's kneecaps, too, but I figure letting people upset me is just going to be bad for MY health in the long run, and I'm certainly not going to give anybody THAT kind of power over me, heh heh. :Þ But I would sometimes like to slingshot a sharp rock into the windshields of the idiots who run red traffic lights!

I checked your userinfo. My goodness, someone in LJ is older than I am??? ;)

From:

Maybe I lied about my age. The Internet is full of middle-aged guys pretending to be teenage girls, so maybe I'm a teenage girl pretending to be a middle-aged guy.

From:

regyt.livejournal.com

You might enjoy today's Something Positive. It's relevant.

From: