Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
I may have started a thread about this before but here it goes again. How someone acts when they know they're doomed and how they act when they're unobserved are supposedly the purest examples of character, but are they?
Living like you're dying poses a lot of issues towards character. Humans are built for long-term risk-reward analysis. Eliminate the long term and you're left with a truncated view of an individual. Suppose a man spent his entire life as a billionaire philanthropist but in his last moments decided to go all out for himself and his friends. Does this and should this devalue a lifetime of philanthropy? Does it and should it cast a negative light on the motives of the man? I don't think so.
As for what a person does when they're all alone, again humans are built for social interactions. Eliminating people from a situation eliminates the need for empathy and in most cases morality. The golden rule only applies when there are other beings to use as reference points. Also, in cases of depression and other psychological disorders that appear much more in isolation, why would anyone define themselves by these traits? Our relationships with others define ourselves much more than when we are alone.
In short, the thought that a person's character and identity can be reduced to the actions of a terminal hermit is silly, but I'm not only here to rant. Anyone else want to weigh in on the idea of character and how it is identified?
Living like you're dying poses a lot of issues towards character. Humans are built for long-term risk-reward analysis. Eliminate the long term and you're left with a truncated view of an individual. Suppose a man spent his entire life as a billionaire philanthropist but in his last moments decided to go all out for himself and his friends. Does this and should this devalue a lifetime of philanthropy? Does it and should it cast a negative light on the motives of the man? I don't think so.
As for what a person does when they're all alone, again humans are built for social interactions. Eliminating people from a situation eliminates the need for empathy and in most cases morality. The golden rule only applies when there are other beings to use as reference points. Also, in cases of depression and other psychological disorders that appear much more in isolation, why would anyone define themselves by these traits? Our relationships with others define ourselves much more than when we are alone.
In short, the thought that a person's character and identity can be reduced to the actions of a terminal hermit is silly, but I'm not only here to rant. Anyone else want to weigh in on the idea of character and how it is identified?