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Freakangels: [Sink] FREAKANGELS Episode 0044

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  1.  (4889.1)
    There fellow humans, so yes, but Darwin would cut them loose


    For your future reference, in case you try to use this argument in the outside world and therefore invite a punitive beating: Darwin wrote that sympathy was "the noblest part of our nature."
  2.  (4889.2)
    For your future reference, in case you try to use this argument in the outside world and therefore invite a punitive beating: Darwin wrote that sympathy was "the noblest part of our nature."


    Beat me to it, Mr. Ellis, thank you. Compassion's place as a survival trait is something far too many people gloss over in their eagerness to forward their own version of fitness.

    By compassion and empathy, we form communities. One of humanity's great survival adaptations is our ability to form those communities... We are social animals. We network, share strengths, gain solace in each other. Yes. There is risk there, yes. Given that our socialization traits persist, I'd argue the adaptation has proven viable.

    Consider the attack by New Cross on Whitechapel and the Mudlark's on Jack and his boat in book one. The first thing that they do in Whitechapel is mobilize the community via the siren and radios. Then the community leaders-- the Freakangels-- start co-ordinating defense. Even setting up the guns is a group effort-- note that Sirkka's harem is trained to arm the big gun on top of her house, and even as Sirkka notes that the training was tedious, she's getting ready to fire on the bastards who hurt her Jack and are coming to invade and hurt people in her town. Note how the people on the street get armed. How many would consider flight more readily if they didn't have a sense of community toward Whitechapel?

    Even Sirkka's little free love group bands together out for defense, suggesting a deeper connection than merely satisfying their physical sexual drive-- I'd wager that they're quite passionate about it, given Jack's observations on how freely Sirkka shares her love. Every one of the boys and girls are arming that gun to defend a place where they can live as they do.

    So, yes, there are some practical concerns that absorbing the nomads raises. But suggesting that Miki's urge to save these people is some sort of Darwinian flaw misses the full picture. It's a risk-- we don't know if her compassion will bring strength to the community yet, what these people have to offer. But that risk is part of humanity's survival traits, not counter to them.
  3.  (4889.3)
    Compassion, sympathy, and empathy. They can get you pretty far in life.
    But when is there to much compassion, sympathy, and empathy.
    There is more then emotions at stake.
    It's life.
    And sometimes there is life you can hold onto...life that can grow, and then there is life the natural world is trying to cut off.
    How do we know which is which?
  4.  (4889.4)
    And sometimes there is life you can hold onto...life that can grow, and then there is life the natural world is trying to cut off.
    How do we know which is which?

    I'd love to see you have this conversation with a doctor.

    Funnily enough, it's a doctor that's mostly speaking, in this episode. What a coincidence.
  5.  (4889.5)
    Well the natural world has always killed of species and give birth to a more extreme form of that species or that species goes instinct and never comes back.
    I don't see why we never think that could happen with the human world.
    Just like I don't see why we couldn't see it happen to other species.
    Nature has worked its part to kill and revive all the time.
  6.  (4889.6)
    ((Edited for clarity and stuff))
    @MasterEyes
    And sometimes there is life you can hold onto...life that can grow, and then there is life the natural world is trying to cut off.
    How do we know which is which?


    Your anthropomorphism of the natural world is not helping you make your point in our current context. When you offer it in this context, my immediate thought is the natural world isn't actively doing anything. It's just the environment. It has no agency. Natural selection is not a matter of mother nature saying this species lives, this one dies. It's the cumulative effect of genes that express as traits that aid survival being passed on to the next generation. They get passed on because they work-- as expressed in the fact the individual LIVES to pass them on. I'd argue helping more of a population survive aides in this. Cheetahs face a sort of "evolutionary body neck" due to the species' gene pool being too narrow. Helping the sick and seemingly weak expands our gene pool. Traits don't necessarily come in nice, perfect packages-- in fact, if they did, evolution wouldn't even be a continuing process.

    @Warren:
    I'd love to see you have this conversation with a doctor.

    Funnily enough, it's a doctor that's mostly speaking, in this episode. What a coincidence.


    Yep. Total coincidence.
    •  
      CommentAuthorrazrangel
    • CommentTimeJan 30th 2009
     (4889.7)
    It's easy to see the ills of the world and get overwhelmed with the tragedy and complexity. But that's why we also have our mental faculties so we can be analytical about what we have, what we can do and what resources are simply unknowable with regard to their extent (e.g. just how creative are we, exactly?). But it's also possible to get so caught up in thinking things as logically and mechanically that we miss how we can expand and get creative with our resources. We forget to "feel" our way through things sometimes, and in that we can miss some obvious things.

    So we have to strike a balance. We can do both - take care of people *and* expand our capabilities. Humanity has been doing exactly that for thousands of years. It's when we shut ourselves off to one another that the shithouse comes down. It's distrust and greed that cause collapses like the one we're in now. More distrust and greed won't solve it.

    I love that the 'Angels are sorta superheroes in that they have supernatural powers, but really kind of ordinary in terms of having very human reactions, emotions and practical concerns (for others). I'm always a fan of stories like these. Thanks, Warren.
  8.  (4889.8)
    I was just saying.
    Maybe these people they are trying to save would be better off dead.
    [Makes me sound like a cold hearted man, but...yeah]
  9.  (4889.9)
    I was just saying.
    Maybe these people they are trying to save would be better off dead.
    [Makes me sound like a cold hearted man, but...yeah]


    Yes. It does.
    •  
      CommentAuthorjohnjones
    • CommentTimeJan 30th 2009
     (4889.10)
    Funnily enough, it's a doctor that's mostly speaking, in this episode. What a coincidence.


    Actually, it's not. Just last week you had KK note that "Miki isn't actually a qualified doctor." And that's an important thing.

    Miki isn't really a doctor. Caz isn't really an engineer. The Freakangels were hunted fugitives for you-knows-how-long. They're brilliant and have superpowers so they can pick things up really quickly, but they don't seem to have gone through any kind of formal educational process beyond perhaps age 13 or so. Maybe older, maybe younger, but 13 seems a good arbitrary cut-off point to me. And without formal training they miss out on things like bioethics and the like.
  11.  (4889.11)
    But the reason I say it is because.
    Miki isn't really a doctor, as it states in an episode back.
    She may know what she is doing a little bit, but maybe she'll bring more harm unto the people.
    It's best to let them die off, rather then to do further harm.
  12.  (4889.12)
    I love that the 'Angels are sorta superheroes in that they have supernatural powers, but really kind of ordinary in terms of having very human reactions, emotions and practical concerns (for others). I'm always a fan of stories like these. Thanks, Warren.


    Yes. Six pages of Awesome that'd run in a better 2000 AD, if they still mattered. And wouldn't try to assume the copyright.
  13.  (4889.13)
    @Masterful Eyes

    But the reason I say it is because.
    Miki isn't really a doctor, as it states in an episode back.
    She may know what she is doing a little bit, but maybe she'll bring more harm unto the people.
    It's best to let them die off, rather then to do further harm.


    Okay. Is it that they're unfit, and thus should be allowed to die, or because the net harm would be greater?
  14.  (4889.14)
    @ D Edward Sauve

    Because the harm they may possible commit to them may be greater.
    They don't know the full extent of their conditions.
    They don't know.
    What if someone had something more serious?
    They could cause harm to that person, more then what they have already suffered.
  15.  (4889.15)
    @Masterful Eyes

    You've just described the daily conflict of many a doctor.

    And I'll note, any supposition about Miki's skill level is just that, supposition. She's doing well enough to diagnose and identify treatments, but we really know very little about any FA's abilities and the extent thereof. Warren is openly describing her as a Doctor, so I've assumed his picture of her includes study to serve as such; even that is a guess.

    And what you've described is exactly why doctors do diagnostics. If someone had waved off my childhood stomach pains as growing pains as my mom insisted, my ulcer would have gone untreated.

    Willful ignorance is only bliss until it transforms into the arse eel of reality tunneling up your bowels. Are you suggesting ignorance is the best course here? I don't think that's what you're trying to say. I hope not..
  16.  (4889.16)
    I never said ignore the issue or be ignorant about it.
    Because it's still a problem.
    But what if it was the wrong diagnosis.
    These people don't look like the type to take the wrong diagnosis and shake it off. Gave them the wrong kind of medicine for something and they might as well be dead. Or worse they may be killed.
    These people aren't healthy to begin with, you give someone who is weak a medicine for something they don't have you don't know how their body will take it.
    If it's a healthy person gone sick, or it is a terminal ill person who is sick...we cans somewhat predict the cases and what is going on if they give them this and that.

    To me Miki is just an intern doctor at the most.
    She may be able to treat some people, but somewhere she is going to mess up.
  17.  (4889.17)
    @ Masterful Eye

    I guess we'll see over the coming episodes if you're guessing correctly. At the moment, I think my playing Juror number 8 to your number 3 might be counter productive and I have to get to work shortly. Please excuse me for now.
    •  
      CommentAuthorstsparky
    • CommentTimeJan 30th 2009
     (4889.18)
    I have to think this is a good development. Compassion to the sick is a valid way to try and end the cycle of retribution. Maybe the FAs will end up fixing Britain and save their world.
    •  
      CommentAuthordiello
    • CommentTimeJan 30th 2009 edited
     (4889.19)
    In a broken world, you appoint the most qualified person to do the job. Doesn't matter anymore whether they're licensed or not. If there's no licensed doctor alive, you do with what you have. All these people are starting over.
  20.  (4889.20)
    I like how a bunch of powerful, pissed-off kids destroyed the world by flexing their muscles, and now are slowly learning that they're going to have to put serious work in to save it. The Freakangels have the ability to save these people, and more besides, but they're going to have to learn how. It's time for them to stop thinking small.

    Of course they had to save these people. Anyone saying different is just afraid of the hard work that standard-level compassion demands.

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