Only people from the normal families (i.e. families where morals are not 'morals', but physiology - unspoken, unquestioned rules)
Trust me, that is not the norm.
When you are very small, you don't understand that other people are real, and that when they are hurt, they really hurt, and it's just as bad as when you are hurt. Some people never grow out of this (and such people may be very intelligent and clever, but I wouldn't want to live with them); most people do, and most of them do it by asking questions (why is the sky blue? why can't I eat dessert first? why are you mad at me for hitting her when it was she who wouldn't let me play with her toy?) and by having it brought home to them that no, the world does not revolve around them.
Most of us, though we may have a sense of right and wrong, don't think about whether a given action is right or wrong until it is brought up. Often, it is brought up indirectly first -- we watch a show where someone says "tell me what I want to know or I will hurt you" long before we are in a position where someone we could hurt will not tell us what we want to know, and so by the time it happens we have long since decided "no, I will not hurt someone to make them talk, I want to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror in the morning."
But sometimes there are times when no matter what you pick, you will hurt someone. And the part of you that thinks "is this a good thing to do?" is one of the first parts to go to sleep when you are very tired, or very angry, or very drunk, or otherwise altering your brain -- and so often people will do things that they know better than to do, and then when they come back to themselves, they hate themselves for it.
The thing people have been suggesting is that the SGA characters, once they knew they were going to be part of the mission, should have been asking themselves "Suppose Thing X happened: what would I do?", working out what the right thing to do would be, and then doing it over and over and over again for slightly different versions of X. Practicing ethics is like practicing a musical instrument or dance or martial arts moves: you do it so that, when you are tired and angry and upset, you will still do the right thing without having to think about it.
Once you *have* practiced it until it's as natural as walking on two feet -- and some people start when they're very young and some people only start seriously practicing when they're much older -- you never do speak about it or question it, any more than you speak about or question why you don't fall on your nose every time you take a step. Of course, if you cheerfully step out onto the ice, you will need to have also practiced walking on two feet on ice. And so on, and so forth.
But perhaps I am misunderstanding you, and we are talking about two different things. After all, it almost seems to me as if you are saying "if your parents were not good people, you can never be a good person," and that can't be right.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 06:06 am (UTC)Trust me, that is not the norm.
When you are very small, you don't understand that other people are real, and that when they are hurt, they really hurt, and it's just as bad as when you are hurt. Some people never grow out of this (and such people may be very intelligent and clever, but I wouldn't want to live with them); most people do, and most of them do it by asking questions (why is the sky blue? why can't I eat dessert first? why are you mad at me for hitting her when it was she who wouldn't let me play with her toy?) and by having it brought home to them that no, the world does not revolve around them.
Most of us, though we may have a sense of right and wrong, don't think about whether a given action is right or wrong until it is brought up. Often, it is brought up indirectly first -- we watch a show where someone says "tell me what I want to know or I will hurt you" long before we are in a position where someone we could hurt will not tell us what we want to know, and so by the time it happens we have long since decided "no, I will not hurt someone to make them talk, I want to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror in the morning."
But sometimes there are times when no matter what you pick, you will hurt someone. And the part of you that thinks "is this a good thing to do?" is one of the first parts to go to sleep when you are very tired, or very angry, or very drunk, or otherwise altering your brain -- and so often people will do things that they know better than to do, and then when they come back to themselves, they hate themselves for it.
The thing people have been suggesting is that the SGA characters, once they knew they were going to be part of the mission, should have been asking themselves "Suppose Thing X happened: what would I do?", working out what the right thing to do would be, and then doing it over and over and over again for slightly different versions of X. Practicing ethics is like practicing a musical instrument or dance or martial arts moves: you do it so that, when you are tired and angry and upset, you will still do the right thing without having to think about it.
Once you *have* practiced it until it's as natural as walking on two feet -- and some people start when they're very young and some people only start seriously practicing when they're much older -- you never do speak about it or question it, any more than you speak about or question why you don't fall on your nose every time you take a step. Of course, if you cheerfully step out onto the ice, you will need to have also practiced walking on two feet on ice. And so on, and so forth.
But perhaps I am misunderstanding you, and we are talking about two different things. After all, it almost seems to me as if you are saying "if your parents were not good people, you can never be a good person," and that can't be right.