At 11:14 PM 11/9/2003 -0800, David Silberstein wrote: >On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Mark Englehart wrote > > and b). learn to see things from the other person's point of > >view; something next to impossible for a Dragaeran who isn't a Tiassa. > > > >Um. I think you are wildly wrong on this last point. We've seen >Sethra be empathic, and gently pushing Tazendra that way (in that >great scene in FHYA), and I am rather sure that there are other >examples as well. Picking a couple more examples at random: How >could Uttrik have forgiven Kathana, if he could not see her outrage >over being slighted over something that was incredibly important to >her? How could Kathana have agreed to submit to justice, if she >could not see Uttrik's grief and loss? And so on. If all of the >Dragaerans were truly so blind, they would seem nearly inhuman. Okay, I misspoke. What I meant to write was the other *House's* point of view. As Vlad has pointed out, a Dragon always thinks like a Dragon, a Dzur like a Dzur. They are not inhuman, they can develop empathy, but their frame of reference is always limited by those animal genes. If Sethra actually was Dragaeran originally, she has transcended it. And Uttrik and Kathana are able to empathize because they are both Dragons. I think that this is an allegory that Steven has played with all along that Theodore Sturgeon would have been most impressed with: only if you can transcend thinking with the animal brain can you become a human being. --Mark