Monday, July 20, 2009

Ethics without empathy?

If we really want to mete out justice without any shred of empathy as defined in my Concise OED ; "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another" then let's not have any minorities on the Supreme Court or women or anybody other than white males who have never had to be in the position to need to have empathy. When one (white males) has always had the power, what need is there for empathy? Such a frivolous emotion that distracts one from one's objective of rational thought or single-minded pursuit of power.

Empathy is for women tending to small children who have fallen down and hurt themselves. We cannot expect our Judicial Branch to show any concern for any group that comes before it. No,
we must keep all that makes us human out of the equation. Come to think of it, when it comes to rational analysis without prejudice, nothing is more effective than the modern computer. Perhaps we should replace the justices with computers. We could input all the cases pending before the court and let the computer determine the outcome through a process of rational analysis. It would greatly streamline the entire court system and avoid even a whiff of emotion, empathy or any of that messy stuff that women are known for. And we could hire autistic people to run the computers so that there would be no chance of anyone fooling with the data, since they are incapable of connecting the data with human emotion. We could even enlist the autistic employees to fill in with the analysis when the power goes out. That should make the Republicans happy. There will be no emotion attached to the process at all. Problem solved. Now I'm not sure how the morals and ethics fit into this picture, but I'm sure that someone could make a rational argument that would satisfy the constitutional experts.

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