Ok.... to start off. I found this awesome website that allows you to actually take a Voight-Kampff replica test. Now its not the actual test but it is kind of like it. Except the way the test questions are you have to follow these directions and it pretty much would give a bogus answer because if you do it once and try to redo it you already know the questions so you would give false answers.
Here is the website if you wish to try it. http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=10271484508075145982 (Warning.... to get your answer you have to sign up. I didnt want my answer because I know my emotions.)
Am I human? Are we only classified as human because we have complex feelings about things? If that is the case than yes I am human. If you ask my friends if that is the case... you will probably get and answer that is somewhere around, HELL no. I have been classified by my friends of not having feelings or emotions towards people because I am a stick in the mud and I tell everyone how it is. I am a sarcastic pessimist, so sue me.
But answering the question of whether I would pass a test that asks question about things I would probably have no feelings to at all is out right wrongful. I wouldn't be able to have emotions toward something if I had never had some kind of relationship with it. I am one of those people. I am a person who has feelings only towards things that I have some emotional stake in. I am weird, I know. But I can't help it. Think about it. Doesn't everyone only have a certain feeling about something when they have researched it to the bone and have a certain view towards it? When people are asked questions about things that they have no view towards and have no idea what it is about they usually just say they don't really have a stand on the notion and toss it aside.
In Philip Dick's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it is said if you do not have emotions than you are not human and you are an android. Well there is a disease called Alexithymics which is a state of deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions. Could you imagine having this disease and having to take this test? You barely cried at the sight of your mom dying, for example, so how would you be able to even take this Voight-Kampff test if you can't even having feelings? Also, I guess this would pose the question of are people with this disease human? Of course they are, but to the people who say that you don't have emotions so you aren't human just proves them wrong. "A hallmark of sef-control is the leader who stays calm and clear-headed under high stress or during a crisis- or who remains unflappable even when confronted by a trying situation" (Emotional Intelligence, 263). Couldn't a person with self-control be construed with someone who has no emotions because they are holding in their emotions to look confident and of higher class?
Could our emotions do us harm? In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Roy is talking to Pris about what would happen if they got caught and he has this for a plan...
"This assembly has a Penfield unit built into it. When the alarm has been triggered, it radiates a mood of panic to the- intruder. Unless he acts very fast, which he may. Enormous panic; I have the gain turned all the way up. No human being can remain in the vicinity more than a matter of seconds. That's the nature of panic: it leads to random circus-motions, purposeless flight, and muscle and neutral spasms" (Dick, 162).
And isn't that so true? We hear the slightest gun shot, an alarm, screams, anything that turns are attention to panic and we have to run. And in some case people turn to that panic and help others and try to stop whatever bad is happening. Through our emotions we have sudden urges to do things. Adrenaline pumps and we get overcome with emotion and questions start popping into are heads that says we could help we aren't the bad guys. You must do something. Superman complex. Now what about Leon and David Powell? The feelings that they had were the opposite effect. At a time of passion whether you have emotions or not you can either do bad or good. Leon had no emotions and did bad cause he "felt" that he had to do something and maybe David felt like he had no other choice so he did the same thing.
And you know towards animals, maybe we sometimes don't have compassion or sympathy because we aren't experiencing it. Maybe everyone in this world should take a trip to a butcher shop and watch some animals die. Than again would it change anything? Probably not. People do things because it is easy and it is the same way they have been doing it for many years now. "You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress" (Junius' Lett xxxvi, 236). Isn' that the truth. Most of our compassion is only shown through from the misery and distress of other and that is how we build off of it.
Would we all be better off emotionless? Or are our emotions what give us character? You be the judge.
-J
