Email to Dayspring, Nathan

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

From: de la Rocha, Manuel
To: Dayspring, Nathan
Subject: Ethics

So what, precisely, is wrong with my ethics? They're supple enough to deal with changing realities, and ... well, that's all that really counts.

They're quite supple. I am growing adept at adapting them to changing circumstances. This is how things _should_ be.

Manuel

Comments

Subject: re: Ethics

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I hope you appreciate the supreme irony of me talking to anyone about ethics. (Or should that be hypocrisy?) But for some reason, part of my mind insists upon regarding you as someone at a crossroads, with a whole set of choices I didn't have at your age. Hence my somewhat-insane persistence.

But I think I'm going to try the didactic approach this time, and ask you why you don't see anything wrong with using your powers to get what you want?

re: Ethics

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Ahhh, you enjoy crossing verbal swords with me. I know this.

There's not anything wrong with it because they are a part of who I am. It is a question of retaliation. If the risk is low, then go ahead. If the risk is high, then either you pay the price, or find someone _else_ to pay the price, or you try another way.

There's also the question of the goal.

Manuel

re: Ethics (situational?)

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Ahhh, you enjoy crossing verbal swords with me. I know this.

Rather more in this format than face-to-face. But then, I'm sure you know that.

You really do have this tendency to oversimplify things, don't you? First you had your safety/sex dichotomy, now this risk/reward/retaliation axis. You may not want to see life as being more complicated than that, but unfortunately, it is. People make it that way. You can smash your way through what you see as games and lies and self-deceptions all you want, but it really just makes you a bull in a china shop.

Another question, then. Since the empaths and telepaths working for my former employers faced no risk when they rewrote my mind and the minds of my fellow operatives, were they right to do so? Was the goal worthwhile?

Nathan

They clearly felt...

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that the reward (an operative they could use to further their own designs) was worth the risk (that you would break the conditioning).

In this case, the risk came to pass, and here you are now.

I do not know what their ultimate goal was, so I cannot answer your question more fully.

Manuel

You don't see anything wrong...

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...with having your freedom of choice, your self-determination taken away? That's funny, given that conversation we were having the other day...

Nathan

Of course I do!

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I object greatly to having my freedom of choice and self-determination taken away!

Manuel

But yours...

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You value yours. Not anyone else's. And before you protest that you only manipulate people in order to preserve yourself... well, don't, because I don't think anyone around here buys that. Manipulating out of need is, in many cases, excusable. Manipulation out of want... not so much.

Nathan

You don't want to hear it...

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because it is true. I have been the lackey of others before. I will never submit to it again.

Not for you, not for Xavier, not for Emma, not for anyone.

Well, OK, maybe for Emma. My life is hers. But not for anyone else!

Manuel

Fasten your seatbelts...

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...for we've apparently veered off into Incoherent-Land again. I wish I could figure out precisely what pushes the 'Rant, Manuel, Rant!' button, because I'm actually not doing it deliberately, as I think we have more productive conversations when you don't start babbling about your submission-related hang-ups.

But let me try again, because I am hard-headed. I think I may actually see the problem. For you, getting anything less than everything you want, down to the last detail, is going to feel like a personal failure... am I right?

Nathan

Not entirely...

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But I do not take well to being denied much of anything. I have been denied even the possibility for too long.

Manuel

So...

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The world owes you what you want, because you've been deprived for so long?

Nathan

The world...

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Owes me a _chance_ at what I want.

If I thought the World cared, which it clearly doesn't.

Manuel

one of my instructors once told me...

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...that people could be separated into 'those who use others' and 'those who are used'. Agree/disagree?

Nathan

I have to agree

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That seems a fair distinction, but I must say that the two groups are not static - they're situational.

Manuel

So there's no middle ground?

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You don't believe it's possible not to use people? If so, how do you explain many of the interactions you have with the people around here, Manuel? (For example, this conversation: who's using who here?)

Nathan

I was taught...

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And I have to agree from experience, that there is no middle ground. There's users and the used.

Right now, I'm using you for enjoyment, for someone to talk to, to practice my English with, and to see a different viewpoint. You are likely doing the same to me, plus you have the hope that I will heed your "wisdom" and change my ways.

Manuel

no, actually...

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...I know that you're going to change your ways, in the end. It may not be to my ways, but it'll happen. Your kind of naivete never lasts for very long.

In the user/used dichotomy, how do you account for... genuine acts of altruism? Say, religiously motivated? Or maybe - if I understood what you did say about your Askani dream in reply to the Professor's post - self-sacrifice in order to save others?

Stupidity?

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Altruism is usually using others to make yourself feel superior. Or, in the case of religion, using yourself or others to make God feel good.

Self-sacrifice for others - that's tougher. I'd say at first blush that it's using the circumstance out of a misguided attempt to appear to be better than you actually are.

But that's a tough one. Many different possibilities.

Manuel

oh, such cynicism!

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It makes my jaded little heart glow.

All right, let's drop the religious issue for the time being. Not sure how I feel on the subject anyway, so it's probably a questionable example.

Self-sacrifice for others - if you die for someone, are you around to accept their gratitude or admiration? As for it being misguided, just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't make any sense. Hypothetically... if someone was pointing a gun at a person you cared about, what would you do?

Nathan

Realism, perhaps.

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I'm an empath, and I have been to church. I have not felt God.

As for self-sacrifice - it's your legacy, your memory, that would be improved by your actions.

I would destroy the person holding the gun and protect those I cared for. That's what power is -for-.

Manuel

And if that scenario happened today?

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If someone was pointing a gun at Amanda, if she couldn't fight back, and you were without your powers? If you were on the wrong side of the room and couldn't get to the person with the gun in time? What would you do?

All right. Now I'm having flashbacks to Keanu Reeves movies...

Nathan

Who?

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I would, at the very least, avenge if I could not prevent.

Honor demands no less.

Manuel

vengeance...

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...would not make the gaping hole in your mind go away, Manuel. Or minimize your pain one iota. But enough of that particular hypothetical. It troubles me.

Let's take a step back. How would you define ethics, anyway?

Nathan

No, it wouldn't...

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But there is a price to be paid for links, and one of them is vulnerability.

How would I define ethics? Hrm. Good question. I don't really care. Ethics are how you behave.

Manuel

uh-huh...

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Then why do most languages have their version of the word 'unethical'?

Nathan