[ExI] Heroism without self-sacrifice

[PJ Manney]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 10:13 PM, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 06 March 2008, PJ Manney wrote:
> > What I think Max is really asking (and even if it's a joke, tell me
> > if you're not) is how do we reprogram the human brain to fight a
>
> Autism/spectrum. These are the people that perform amazing feats of
> mental programming, some are able to construct mental firewalls so
> powerful that nothing can get through to them, while others are able to
> more constructively use these abilities.

But then you have the difficulty of empathy, which is the key to
storytelling.  Which is why many, but by no means all autists have
problems with myths and stories.  It's hard for them to relate because
empathy can be difficult.  Of course, many don't have problems, like
Anne.  But it is interesting that Anne approaches stories and more
importantly, characters, in a very different manner than I do, and
it's not only because we come from different disciplines, or that I
create characters for a living and she doesn't.  It's a more
fundamental difference in perception and processing of human behavior.

> > Most importantly, the hero should be reconceptualized through a
> > redefinition of 'self' and of 'sacrifice', not by the removal of
>
> The hero could be reconceptualized by redefining it as, say, yourself.

That's not enough.  Not every story is about "I" nor should it be.

> We call an unempathetic protagonist a supervillian.

No.  Villains can be very empathetic, just terribly misguided and
immoral as a result.  Also, protagonists can be very misguided, even
immoral, and still empathetic, too.  Empathy doesn't involve white
hats, white horses or anything else white for that matter.  It just
means you can imagine being in their shoes and you understand why they
made the choices they made.

If you can't generate empathy, meaning you can't imagine being that
person, then you've got either a dull villain or a duller hero.
Yawn...

> Yes, purpose is important in making the hero, but it is from within, it
> not necessarily a group 'we' that makes it. Actually, this might be
> suspect based off of Jef's response to my last post re: group coherency
> versus internal coherency.

Sorry, not quite sure where you're going there.  If you mean we don't
create stories/heroes as a group, well you're right.  And you're
wrong.  Just depends upon the scale of the context.  And I'm too tired
to go there right now.

PJ