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.
The price of liberty is something more than eternal vigilance. There must also be eternal advance. We can save the rights we have inherited from our fathers only by winning new ones to bequeath our children.
Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action. It is not adopted in criticism of others in the slightest degree, but solely for the purpose of protecting ourselves. We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.
We always strive after what is forbidden, and desire the things refused us.
On the streets of the city They have taken my Who-I-Am As well as my What-I-Was And now I am desperate for them both Again
Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth, pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed, which we saw once in a pure, clear light, being pure ourselves.
Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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