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fandomhigh2016-08-01 09:51 am
endsthegame) wrote in fandomhigh2016-08-01 09:51 am
Entry tags:
Practical Philosophy, Monday
Today, class was meeting... in the Danger Shop. Ender had programmed it with a simulation of a nice, cool forest clearing, though otherwise his setup was unchanged.
"I suppose this week is as good a week as any to talk about nurture," he said wryly, sitting down. "Specifically, what effect does the environment you grew up in - or exist in - have on you personally? Has it helped define you, or does it define you entirely, or are most of your traits inborn?"
He spread his arms.
"It's an issue on which scientists and philosophers have quarreled for centuries," he said. "When a child gets born to a family in the desert, are they instilled with a resistance to heat on a biological level, or is it that they grow up accustomed to it? Is a child born cheerful, or is that a mechanism they build as they explore how their interaction affects the world around them? And so forth, and so on. I don't want to really talk about other people, though. I want to talk about you."
He took a sip of water.
"So tell me about where you come from, in as much detail - or lack thereof - as you like," he said. "How much of an effect do you think it's had on who you are?"
"I suppose this week is as good a week as any to talk about nurture," he said wryly, sitting down. "Specifically, what effect does the environment you grew up in - or exist in - have on you personally? Has it helped define you, or does it define you entirely, or are most of your traits inborn?"
He spread his arms.
"It's an issue on which scientists and philosophers have quarreled for centuries," he said. "When a child gets born to a family in the desert, are they instilled with a resistance to heat on a biological level, or is it that they grow up accustomed to it? Is a child born cheerful, or is that a mechanism they build as they explore how their interaction affects the world around them? And so forth, and so on. I don't want to really talk about other people, though. I want to talk about you."
He took a sip of water.
"So tell me about where you come from, in as much detail - or lack thereof - as you like," he said. "How much of an effect do you think it's had on who you are?"
Re: Talk.
Re: Talk.
"If that's the case... then... I suppose we are taught not to change, and that would technically count. But allowing as much change to happen to us as you humans experience, even over the course of our much, much longer lives, is... discouraged."
Strongly.
Re: Talk.
Not judging, really. It obviously took Peridot effort to come to these kinds of conclusions, and he wasn't trying to goaed her along. It was just becoming increasingly obvious that she had gotten a rather rigorous philosophical imprinting when she'd been born. Then again, he reflected, didn't humans, too?
"It makes an amount of sense, of course, to teach your children to think like that, if earlier forages into a different philosophy had such cataclysmic results."
He'd know.
RE: Re: Talk.
Children just seemed so... Human. She still didn't understand them. She was simply aware that they existed.
Re: Talk.
RE: Re: Talk.
"Would you agree it's a fair assessment, then, to say that Gems are made fully developed, but with the capacity to learn and change? That we do pick up a lot from the society around us as well, but not having that exposure from our creation isn't necessarily a hindrance, either?"
Out of the ground and straight to work.
Re: Talk.
From Peridot's point-of-view, but Ender had no other Gems to compare her to.
RE: Re: Talk.
"Then that," she settled on with a nod. "That's the role nurture plays for us. For me."
So far.