Devit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
halfcocked) wrote2009-01-11 08:11 am
halfcocked) wrote2009-01-11 08:11 am
Entry tags:
they call it mind-blindness
HEY DUDE HEY DUDE YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVEN'T DONE IN A GOOD WHILE?
ESSAYED \o/ you are all so happy right.
Anyway. So Devit's been in camp for about 8.5 months now. And I was thinking about how Devit has adapted to camp in that time and why. At the moment in camp, Devit is--fairly content. He's as content as Devit gets, which is to say that he still flies off the handle, and he still breaks down over stupid things and busts out with "I DON'T KNOW WHY I DON'T JUST KILL YOU ALL RIGHT NOW"--but then he's able to suppress that urge (if he wants to) instead of actually going through with it in a fit of rage. And that's what "content" is for Devit. XD His tendency towards violence at the moment is low. YOU WILL PROBABLY SURVIVE PISSING HIM OFF unless you really push it or you piss Jasdero off too.
I was thinking about this shift, and how it's come about, and what exactly happened in his head to facilitate it. The short answer is that Devit believes in the inherent weakness and evil and uselessness of humans as much as he ever did, but he is less angry at them about it, and so he's less inclined to kill them in anger, although his inclination to kill them for other reasons has not diminished.
THE LONG ANSWER FOLLOWS.
Devit's stats as per the DGM fanbook:
Education - 2/5
Empathy - 1/5
Battle Ability - 4/5
Willpower - 3/5
Adaptability - 2/5
Pride - 5/5
Sob I love Hoshino. The Noah, IIRC, all get 1/5 for "empathy," except for Ticky, who is A PUSSY!!! and gets 3/5 (higher than some of the Exorcists, ha ha ha). We see Devit's lack of empathy throughout his chapters, too. What I mean by "lack of empathy" isn't "he doesn't feel bad for starving children!" That's CERTAINLY TRUE. But that's sympathy anyway and I get the two mixed up and MAYBE THAT'S JUST ME but. Devit lacks both.
What I mean is a much more general . . . Devit has a very poor ability to put himself in anyone else's shoes, or to understand anyone else's mindset, or to remember that other people think differently. When Jasdevi is fighting Crowley and they want to fuck with his mind, they parrot back to him what would fuck with THEIR minds (and get called on it). They show a repeated lack of understanding of what anyone else is thinking; they mess with people based on what would work on themselves, because they're unable to get into people's heads, and frankly they don't care. JASDEVI IS NOT AN INTELLECTUAL FIGHTER, not like Rhode. He/they are very "We're just going to punch you now and we might take two seconds to talk shit at you for a minute, but it'll really be shit-talking ourselves, just directed at you."
Having empathy goes along with having a theory of mind. I'M JUST GOING TO STEAL FROM WIKI HERE.
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states-—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.-—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own.
Theory of mind is what allows people to understand the beliefs of others and the fact that people are capable of holding false beliefs. There's an experiment where you give a kid a candy box, show them that it's full of pencils, and then ask them what their best friend would think was in it if you showed them the closed box. OBVIOUSLY THE ANSWER IS CANDY because the friend hasn't seen the pencils inside. But kids (and animals) without theory of mind will say "pencils" because THEY know the box contains pencils and therefore everyone knows, right?
THIS IS KIND OF WHAT DEVIT IS LIKE, in terms of theory of mind and empathy. He's not like, gorilla-bad at this; he would pass the Candy/Pencil Test because he's not impaired or anything. But in a broader sense, he has this problem, because his rock-bottom empathy doesn't allow him to easily grasp the differences between his own mind and other minds. For example, he has this problem with attraction to people. Devit finds Hakuren attractive, and therefore he assumes that everyone in camp finds Hakuren attractive. He doesn't find Axel attractive, so he assumes no one else does either, and gets confused when people do. He used to find Mika attractive and no longer does, so he doesn't even really get why he used to, much less why anyone else still does. The same goes for other topics. He still doesn't understand how Tohru can dress in drag and not be ashamed, because Devit would be ashamed. It's a totally foreign concept to him that anyone could NOT be. He assumes Tohru has Problems, or is lying about being fine with it, the same way Teito is obviously lying about not wanting to bang Hakuren and Shuri was lying about not wanting to stab Devit.
So Devit's empathy and theory of mind are really weak. They're there, but his grasp is tenuous at best, mostly because he just doesn't bother; it's a Noah thing. Why should he care? Theory of mind is also what allows people to understand that other people can harbor false beliefs. And the fact that Devit REALLY SUCKS AT IT is, or was, at the root of his immediate anger at humans.
The problem goes like this: you take a Devit and show him a human, and then you stick a Noah inside his head and show him everything that's rotten inside that human, and then you ask him "What would another human think is inside this human?" It's like the candy box full of pencils. The answer is "candy." But Devit thinks it's "pencils." The Noah shows him The Truth about humans and how rotten they are, and because he knows it, he doesn't understand why humans don't; he assumes that humans get how nasty and evil they are, and that they just don't care, or that they revel in it. And that is why Devit was so angry at humans. How dare they fear and hate him and call him a monster when they're the real monsters and they know that.
Like I mentioned, a lot of this issue arose because Devit had no reason to care. It'd be like if termites colonized your house and you went and read up on "how to live harmoniously with your termites" while the exterminator was bug-bombing the house. Why should Devit invest any energy into wondering about what humans know and think? They're all just worthless vermin who are going to die anyway!
BUT THEN CAMP HAPPENED.
Devit's not really the most adaptable guy. (See his stats above ;o;) And his sense of self-preservation kind of sucks. But he does like to have fun and feel good, and deep in his secret heart he wants to be liked and have friends. And so slowly, over the course of several months, his social self-preservation has started to kick in. He's gotten into several arguments and fights over his lack of empathy and understanding, and it's a pain in the ass, because here in camp--he can't just kill everyone. Even if there were no social consequences he couldn't do that, because no one stays dead, and a lot of people are very very powerful or have very very powerful mafias. And so Devit can't just make his problems go away with violence, at least not permanently. He enjoys fighting and killing on principle, but if it's a matter of "I got in an argument with this guy and so I killed him"? That doesn't end the argument, not in camp.
To make things worse, there are social consequences to his behavior. If Devit goes around doing whatever he wants, for one thing, he's going to get broken up with! And most of the people who talk to him are probably going to start hating him again! And Devit's reaction to that is "murder them," and that's going to get him killed by their superpowered mafias! And that will make Jasdero suffer too! And so on.
So while Devit's own morals say "kill humans, whatever, they're meaningless," the morals of others say NO THAT IS BAD. And Devit's not so mind-blind as to not get THAT. He's not going to throw away his own moral code for everyone else's, of course, because his is right; what he needs is to understand everyone else's moral code so that he knows how to navigate it without seriously fucking up his life in camp. And hence started Devit's journey of Figuring Out How People Think.
He's still working out the kinks. For example--recently there was a post were Capella was high on caffeine and ran around getting into danger. Devit's own Noah morals say "Who the fuck cares, it's just a human kid, let him get hurt." Human morals say "OMG TEH CHILDREN SAVE HIM." Devit realizes this, but he doesn't really care. What he does care about is his own social self-preservation: "Hakuren likes that kid, so if he gets hurt, Hakuren will be pissy when he finds out. I should avoid that situation." (In this case Devit decided to "avoid that situation" by killing Capella to reset his body if he should have happened to break a leg, thus preventing Hakuren from finding out rather than preventing the injury itself. LIKE I SAID, HE'S STILL NOT GOOD AT THIS.)
This is the sort of thing Devit has been slowly learning to do over the months in order to make his life in camp easier. He's never needed before to worry about how people would react to his behavior; if it was troublesome, he could just kill them. Here he can't. So he's having to gradually figure out how to predict these things, and that involves developing a small amount of empathy, so that he can have some understanding of "If I do this, this person might do this, because they are not the same as I am."
And the upshot is this: as he's been figuring out theory of mind and empathy and "oh hey yeah people don't necessarily understand that their beliefs are erroneous just because I have that information," he's REALIZED SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT HUMANS, which is that they don't really get what they are, and that's not their fault. By that I mean "the fact that humans don't know that they're evil isn't their fault." The fact that humans ARE evil? Is still their fault. Devit's a Noah, and he has this THING in his head telling him that, and it can't go away short of being exorcised in some way that Hoshino will undoubtedly reveal in three years. |D Devit still does not and cannot believe that humans are inherently good or have overall good intentions or . . . aren't a plague on his world, however much he might like some individuals. But his assumption before was that humans knew this about themselves, because why wouldn't they? How could they not, being humans, be privy to all the information the Noah has shared with Devit about human failure and evil?
But the more he's discussed it with humans themselves, the more he's realized that it's true--humans harbor false beliefs. They don't KNOW as much as Devit does. And they never can or will. With that realization, some of Devit's immediate anger at humanity died off. By "immediate anger" I mean the anger that gets Devit into fistfights and shouting matches and crimes of passion. The anger that gets Devit into "genocidal plan to end the world" is still there intact. But it's more, mmm, just the knowledge he's been given by Noah, that the world is better off without humans and they're evil creatures who follow an evil God and so on. That's his Truth, and it always will be. But the added rage of " . . . AND YOU'RE DOING IT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE YOU'RE ASSHOLES WHO ARE OUT TO GET ME!" has diminished.
Devit's Empathy Score is still only like 2/5, but because as he's come to understand humans a little better out of his own sense of self-preservation, it has gone up. He's able to understand now a LITTLE more clearly that people think differently than he does. And because of that he's come to understand that the humans he talks to, although they are worthless and weak and possibly evil depending on their background, are not actively trying to deceive him or themselves; they just aren't as privileged as Devit is when it comes to knowledge about human nature! |D And it's--harder to lash out at that. Humans can't help it, he's realizing. Sure they're beyond help and need to be wiped out, but it's no WONDER they disagree and get mad about it when they just don't understand themselves the way Devit understands them.
And so Devit finds it easier to talk to humans than he used to--not because he LIKES them more, but because he UNDERSTANDS them a little bit better, and it's harder to be angry even at something you hate when you kind of get where they're coming from and why their state of mind isn't the same as yours. \o/
HOW WAS THAT o man it's been so long since I had a good essay.
ESSAYED \o/ you are all so happy right.
Anyway. So Devit's been in camp for about 8.5 months now. And I was thinking about how Devit has adapted to camp in that time and why. At the moment in camp, Devit is--fairly content. He's as content as Devit gets, which is to say that he still flies off the handle, and he still breaks down over stupid things and busts out with "I DON'T KNOW WHY I DON'T JUST KILL YOU ALL RIGHT NOW"--but then he's able to suppress that urge (if he wants to) instead of actually going through with it in a fit of rage. And that's what "content" is for Devit. XD His tendency towards violence at the moment is low. YOU WILL PROBABLY SURVIVE PISSING HIM OFF unless you really push it or you piss Jasdero off too.
I was thinking about this shift, and how it's come about, and what exactly happened in his head to facilitate it. The short answer is that Devit believes in the inherent weakness and evil and uselessness of humans as much as he ever did, but he is less angry at them about it, and so he's less inclined to kill them in anger, although his inclination to kill them for other reasons has not diminished.
THE LONG ANSWER FOLLOWS.
Devit's stats as per the DGM fanbook:
Education - 2/5
Empathy - 1/5
Battle Ability - 4/5
Willpower - 3/5
Adaptability - 2/5
Pride - 5/5
Sob I love Hoshino. The Noah, IIRC, all get 1/5 for "empathy," except for Ticky, who is A PUSSY!!! and gets 3/5 (higher than some of the Exorcists, ha ha ha). We see Devit's lack of empathy throughout his chapters, too. What I mean by "lack of empathy" isn't "he doesn't feel bad for starving children!" That's CERTAINLY TRUE. But that's sympathy anyway and I get the two mixed up and MAYBE THAT'S JUST ME but. Devit lacks both.
What I mean is a much more general . . . Devit has a very poor ability to put himself in anyone else's shoes, or to understand anyone else's mindset, or to remember that other people think differently. When Jasdevi is fighting Crowley and they want to fuck with his mind, they parrot back to him what would fuck with THEIR minds (and get called on it). They show a repeated lack of understanding of what anyone else is thinking; they mess with people based on what would work on themselves, because they're unable to get into people's heads, and frankly they don't care. JASDEVI IS NOT AN INTELLECTUAL FIGHTER, not like Rhode. He/they are very "We're just going to punch you now and we might take two seconds to talk shit at you for a minute, but it'll really be shit-talking ourselves, just directed at you."
Having empathy goes along with having a theory of mind. I'M JUST GOING TO STEAL FROM WIKI HERE.
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states-—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.-—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own.
Theory of mind is what allows people to understand the beliefs of others and the fact that people are capable of holding false beliefs. There's an experiment where you give a kid a candy box, show them that it's full of pencils, and then ask them what their best friend would think was in it if you showed them the closed box. OBVIOUSLY THE ANSWER IS CANDY because the friend hasn't seen the pencils inside. But kids (and animals) without theory of mind will say "pencils" because THEY know the box contains pencils and therefore everyone knows, right?
THIS IS KIND OF WHAT DEVIT IS LIKE, in terms of theory of mind and empathy. He's not like, gorilla-bad at this; he would pass the Candy/Pencil Test because he's not impaired or anything. But in a broader sense, he has this problem, because his rock-bottom empathy doesn't allow him to easily grasp the differences between his own mind and other minds. For example, he has this problem with attraction to people. Devit finds Hakuren attractive, and therefore he assumes that everyone in camp finds Hakuren attractive. He doesn't find Axel attractive, so he assumes no one else does either, and gets confused when people do. He used to find Mika attractive and no longer does, so he doesn't even really get why he used to, much less why anyone else still does. The same goes for other topics. He still doesn't understand how Tohru can dress in drag and not be ashamed, because Devit would be ashamed. It's a totally foreign concept to him that anyone could NOT be. He assumes Tohru has Problems, or is lying about being fine with it, the same way Teito is obviously lying about not wanting to bang Hakuren and Shuri was lying about not wanting to stab Devit.
So Devit's empathy and theory of mind are really weak. They're there, but his grasp is tenuous at best, mostly because he just doesn't bother; it's a Noah thing. Why should he care? Theory of mind is also what allows people to understand that other people can harbor false beliefs. And the fact that Devit REALLY SUCKS AT IT is, or was, at the root of his immediate anger at humans.
The problem goes like this: you take a Devit and show him a human, and then you stick a Noah inside his head and show him everything that's rotten inside that human, and then you ask him "What would another human think is inside this human?" It's like the candy box full of pencils. The answer is "candy." But Devit thinks it's "pencils." The Noah shows him The Truth about humans and how rotten they are, and because he knows it, he doesn't understand why humans don't; he assumes that humans get how nasty and evil they are, and that they just don't care, or that they revel in it. And that is why Devit was so angry at humans. How dare they fear and hate him and call him a monster when they're the real monsters and they know that.
Like I mentioned, a lot of this issue arose because Devit had no reason to care. It'd be like if termites colonized your house and you went and read up on "how to live harmoniously with your termites" while the exterminator was bug-bombing the house. Why should Devit invest any energy into wondering about what humans know and think? They're all just worthless vermin who are going to die anyway!
BUT THEN CAMP HAPPENED.
Devit's not really the most adaptable guy. (See his stats above ;o;) And his sense of self-preservation kind of sucks. But he does like to have fun and feel good, and deep in his secret heart he wants to be liked and have friends. And so slowly, over the course of several months, his social self-preservation has started to kick in. He's gotten into several arguments and fights over his lack of empathy and understanding, and it's a pain in the ass, because here in camp--he can't just kill everyone. Even if there were no social consequences he couldn't do that, because no one stays dead, and a lot of people are very very powerful or have very very powerful mafias. And so Devit can't just make his problems go away with violence, at least not permanently. He enjoys fighting and killing on principle, but if it's a matter of "I got in an argument with this guy and so I killed him"? That doesn't end the argument, not in camp.
To make things worse, there are social consequences to his behavior. If Devit goes around doing whatever he wants, for one thing, he's going to get broken up with! And most of the people who talk to him are probably going to start hating him again! And Devit's reaction to that is "murder them," and that's going to get him killed by their superpowered mafias! And that will make Jasdero suffer too! And so on.
So while Devit's own morals say "kill humans, whatever, they're meaningless," the morals of others say NO THAT IS BAD. And Devit's not so mind-blind as to not get THAT. He's not going to throw away his own moral code for everyone else's, of course, because his is right; what he needs is to understand everyone else's moral code so that he knows how to navigate it without seriously fucking up his life in camp. And hence started Devit's journey of Figuring Out How People Think.
He's still working out the kinks. For example--recently there was a post were Capella was high on caffeine and ran around getting into danger. Devit's own Noah morals say "Who the fuck cares, it's just a human kid, let him get hurt." Human morals say "OMG TEH CHILDREN SAVE HIM." Devit realizes this, but he doesn't really care. What he does care about is his own social self-preservation: "Hakuren likes that kid, so if he gets hurt, Hakuren will be pissy when he finds out. I should avoid that situation." (In this case Devit decided to "avoid that situation" by killing Capella to reset his body if he should have happened to break a leg, thus preventing Hakuren from finding out rather than preventing the injury itself. LIKE I SAID, HE'S STILL NOT GOOD AT THIS.)
This is the sort of thing Devit has been slowly learning to do over the months in order to make his life in camp easier. He's never needed before to worry about how people would react to his behavior; if it was troublesome, he could just kill them. Here he can't. So he's having to gradually figure out how to predict these things, and that involves developing a small amount of empathy, so that he can have some understanding of "If I do this, this person might do this, because they are not the same as I am."
And the upshot is this: as he's been figuring out theory of mind and empathy and "oh hey yeah people don't necessarily understand that their beliefs are erroneous just because I have that information," he's REALIZED SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT HUMANS, which is that they don't really get what they are, and that's not their fault. By that I mean "the fact that humans don't know that they're evil isn't their fault." The fact that humans ARE evil? Is still their fault. Devit's a Noah, and he has this THING in his head telling him that, and it can't go away short of being exorcised in some way that Hoshino will undoubtedly reveal in three years. |D Devit still does not and cannot believe that humans are inherently good or have overall good intentions or . . . aren't a plague on his world, however much he might like some individuals. But his assumption before was that humans knew this about themselves, because why wouldn't they? How could they not, being humans, be privy to all the information the Noah has shared with Devit about human failure and evil?
But the more he's discussed it with humans themselves, the more he's realized that it's true--humans harbor false beliefs. They don't KNOW as much as Devit does. And they never can or will. With that realization, some of Devit's immediate anger at humanity died off. By "immediate anger" I mean the anger that gets Devit into fistfights and shouting matches and crimes of passion. The anger that gets Devit into "genocidal plan to end the world" is still there intact. But it's more, mmm, just the knowledge he's been given by Noah, that the world is better off without humans and they're evil creatures who follow an evil God and so on. That's his Truth, and it always will be. But the added rage of " . . . AND YOU'RE DOING IT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE YOU'RE ASSHOLES WHO ARE OUT TO GET ME!" has diminished.
Devit's Empathy Score is still only like 2/5, but because as he's come to understand humans a little better out of his own sense of self-preservation, it has gone up. He's able to understand now a LITTLE more clearly that people think differently than he does. And because of that he's come to understand that the humans he talks to, although they are worthless and weak and possibly evil depending on their background, are not actively trying to deceive him or themselves; they just aren't as privileged as Devit is when it comes to knowledge about human nature! |D And it's--harder to lash out at that. Humans can't help it, he's realizing. Sure they're beyond help and need to be wiped out, but it's no WONDER they disagree and get mad about it when they just don't understand themselves the way Devit understands them.
And so Devit finds it easier to talk to humans than he used to--not because he LIKES them more, but because he UNDERSTANDS them a little bit better, and it's harder to be angry even at something you hate when you kind of get where they're coming from and why their state of mind isn't the same as yours. \o/
HOW WAS THAT o man it's been so long since I had a good essay.