Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.
Interpretation
Empathy can create moral dilemmas by blurring the lines between different roles in life.
In this quote, Philip K. Dick explores the complexities of empathy, suggesting that it's easier to empathize with those who are not viewed as predators. He implies that when one extends empathy across boundaries—such as between hunters and prey—it can lead to a confusing moral landscape where success and failure are not easily defined. This challenges the reader to consider the implications of empathy in social dynamics and ethical considerations.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics in literature, this quote could be used to illustrate the moral complexities faced by characters.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.
An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.
People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought. This language of thought probably looks a bit like all these languagesBut compared with any given language, mentalese must be richer in some ways and simpler in others.
The ways we miss our lives are life.
God's hand never slips. He never makes a mistake. His every move is for our own good and for our ultimate good.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
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