Ahh, see what's going on here re: sanity vs. insanity. There are two problems here, the question of what the canonical norm for Kryptonians are and the way we we're approaching Clark's assumed insanity
The fic takes the approach that Jor-El AI's (and fake-Kara, who is presumably parroting what the AI downloaded into her)claims about emotions and Kryptonians as truth. I, on the other hand, base my opinions of Kryptonians primarily on the Kandorians in S9 and assume that the AI was compromised or lying in some capacity. The Kandorians, and Lara and Kara for that matter, all seemed to emote at normal human levels, and I assumed that was the norm. If that was the norm -> Lex was wrong -> Lex was making sweepind decisions about Clark's mental health without doing research.
The other thing is Lex is approaching Kryptonians not feeling and not lying as a biological predisposition whereas I'm approaching it (assuming that it's true) as a social issue. If Kryptonians have an innate tendency to emote at low levels or not at all then Clark, who is pretty heavy on the emoting, is obviously mental unbalanced in some way, which as Lex states, is cause for concern. But if Kryptonians lack of emotional displays aren't because of an inherent lack of emtions, but a cultural norm toward not displaying the emotions they are feeling, then that's different. Clark would still be "insane" by Kryptonian standards because he is failing to comply to social norms, but that failure would be reflecting the way he was raised, not a biochemical insability, and therefore not a cause for concern.
And I admit I misunderstood what Lex was doing with the "forcibly changing Clark's mind." I was under the impression that Clark had told Lex that he believed X to be true, and Lex told him that notX was true and Clark had to believe it because Lex told him so. But it looks like it was more like Clark said X was true and Lex told him that W, Y, and Z were true, which made Clark reevaluate his opinion from X, to notX. It achieves the same thing, but in a nicer way. And I think either of these could cause cognitive dissonance, depending on how firmly Clark held onto the truth of X in spite of being forced to accept contradictory evidence or beliefs from Lex.
I sent you a TL;DR set of PM's, since I talk too much.
For anybody else who may be reading and care? The short version:
Lex hasn't seen the Kandorians in S9, but for the basis of this fic, yeah, I based the idea of in/sanity slightly off them, and Kara, too. (Lara, not so much.) The very IMHO general conclusions I made from canon were:
-- I took/read the Kandorians very differently than you did. Kandorians who were Zod-fanatics and killed a lot of people (including Zod) seemed to emote far more than Faora's group, who seemed a lot more calm/sedate/collected. I did not generally equate "cold" with "unfeeling"; kind of the opposite, in fact. (To me, the Zod-fanatics seemed to cycle between very cold/unfeeling and shows of emotion-laden devotion.)
(However, I can undermine my own argument here by saying that their coldness/lack of emotion could be from constant pervasive shellshock -- the general trauma of finding out that Kandor had been bombed, Krypton was destroyed, and that they were all clones and not 'true' Kryptonians, which was anathema in their culture. Stupid theories :-P )
Kara started out traumatized by losing her family and Krypton (and being brain-bent by Zor-El). I always stuck her in the slightly-crazy category.
If I wanted to be evil, I could try and make a case that Clark got his insanity from Lara's side of the family, but that would be completely and purely speculative;)
I characterize "normal" Kryptonian reactions to stress as acting very arrogant and brittle, and then either calming down and start to recover (the 'not killing the other sentient lifeforms that cause you no harm' option), or getting highly emotional and stay that way (the 'I am the only thing that matters in the universe' option). You'll excuse me if I find the idea of a sentient space-faring race that is and has been generally peaceful/idyllic (until the terrorism), that would consider a member who suddenly decides that killing indiscriminately is ok as 'sane' within that alien race, to be a little too far out there for me ;)
Putting aside the above for the moment, you're absolutely right about the social vs. biological basis, and I made no mention about Lex having looked up any medical information (or the social information) in my fic at all. (Head, meet wall.)
I still don't see it as likely as being a social issue because of the Kandorian reaction to Zod's murder of Faora. If there was ever a time for societal niceties/cultural norms to break down as a whole, my feeling it that it would have been there, and that didn't happen. (But again, opinion.)
Also, I can't remember a time when the Fortress AI has canonically outright lied. (Withheld information, yes. Lied, no. I could be forgetting something, though. If I am, please let me know.)
My view of canon is that the Ship/Caves/Fortress AI has actually seemed fairly consistent in what it wants Clark to do. Consistency in a program that can adapt/learn generally does not indicate critical corruption or damage to said program, though. BrainIAC adapted to damage, but it bootstrapped a lot. I don't remember seeing similar happen with the AI.
Anyway, that's my basis for things. I totally agree with your logic and conclusions drawn according to each of the different/opposing starting points from evidence/assumptions :)
As for the cognitive dissonance -- you're right about the contradictory beliefs. Taking it one step further, I wasn't thinking too much about the possible cascade effects of what might happen if, say, belief X was 'weak evidence' for beliefs A, B, and C, or what issues might happen if the underlying beliefs that supported X remained unchanged. (The latter is actually very hard to be sure of in retrospect.)
I think you're right -- the re-evaluation of not-X to X through indirect means could still cause cognitive dissonance, depending on what else informed the veracity of W, Y, and Z. Some background knowledge farther up the line would effectively still have to be ignored, and that sort of disconnect could be very bad.
But yeah, still 'nicer' and probably less dissonant than changing X directly, when X is a belief informed by strong evidence/facts.
Man, this is starting to make my brain hurt. (Programming people is hard! *lol* ;) --I think I need some sleep now :-P
...It occurs to me to add here for everybody else (since Nicnac and I jumped to PM's): I don't actually think Clark is insane; I do think he's crazy. Just not necessarily in the horrible 'oh-god-oh-god-run' or 'back away slowly' way. Nicnac and I both pretty much agree that practically everybody on the show is at least a little crazy (not that there's anything wrong with that, per se, 'normal' being overrated), and that they could all use some serious therapy ^_^;;
The fic takes the approach that Jor-El AI's (and fake-Kara, who is presumably parroting what the AI downloaded into her)claims about emotions and Kryptonians as truth. I, on the other hand, base my opinions of Kryptonians primarily on the Kandorians in S9 and assume that the AI was compromised or lying in some capacity. The Kandorians, and Lara and Kara for that matter, all seemed to emote at normal human levels, and I assumed that was the norm. If that was the norm -> Lex was wrong -> Lex was making sweepind decisions about Clark's mental health without doing research.
The other thing is Lex is approaching Kryptonians not feeling and not lying as a biological predisposition whereas I'm approaching it (assuming that it's true) as a social issue. If Kryptonians have an innate tendency to emote at low levels or not at all then Clark, who is pretty heavy on the emoting, is obviously mental unbalanced in some way, which as Lex states, is cause for concern. But if Kryptonians lack of emotional displays aren't because of an inherent lack of emtions, but a cultural norm toward not displaying the emotions they are feeling, then that's different. Clark would still be "insane" by Kryptonian standards because he is failing to comply to social norms, but that failure would be reflecting the way he was raised, not a biochemical insability, and therefore not a cause for concern.
And I admit I misunderstood what Lex was doing with the "forcibly changing Clark's mind." I was under the impression that Clark had told Lex that he believed X to be true, and Lex told him that notX was true and Clark had to believe it because Lex told him so. But it looks like it was more like Clark said X was true and Lex told him that W, Y, and Z were true, which made Clark reevaluate his opinion from X, to notX. It achieves the same thing, but in a nicer way. And I think either of these could cause cognitive dissonance, depending on how firmly Clark held onto the truth of X in spite of being forced to accept contradictory evidence or beliefs from Lex.
Reply
For anybody else who may be reading and care? The short version:
Lex hasn't seen the Kandorians in S9, but for the basis of this fic, yeah, I based the idea of in/sanity slightly off them, and Kara, too. (Lara, not so much.) The very IMHO general conclusions I made from canon were:
-- I took/read the Kandorians very differently than you did. Kandorians who were Zod-fanatics and killed a lot of people (including Zod) seemed to emote far more than Faora's group, who seemed a lot more calm/sedate/collected. I did not generally equate "cold" with "unfeeling"; kind of the opposite, in fact. (To me, the Zod-fanatics seemed to cycle between very cold/unfeeling and shows of emotion-laden devotion.)
(However, I can undermine my own argument here by saying that their coldness/lack of emotion could be from constant pervasive shellshock -- the general trauma of finding out that Kandor had been bombed, Krypton was destroyed, and that they were all clones and not 'true' Kryptonians, which was anathema in their culture. Stupid theories :-P )
Kara started out traumatized by losing her family and Krypton (and being brain-bent by Zor-El). I always stuck her in the slightly-crazy category.
If I wanted to be evil, I could try and make a case that Clark got his insanity from Lara's side of the family, but that would be completely and purely speculative;)
I characterize "normal" Kryptonian reactions to stress as acting very arrogant and brittle, and then either calming down and start to recover (the 'not killing the other sentient lifeforms that cause you no harm' option), or getting highly emotional and stay that way (the 'I am the only thing that matters in the universe' option). You'll excuse me if I find the idea of a sentient space-faring race that is and has been generally peaceful/idyllic (until the terrorism), that would consider a member who suddenly decides that killing indiscriminately is ok as 'sane' within that alien race, to be a little too far out there for me ;)
Putting aside the above for the moment, you're absolutely right about the social vs. biological basis, and I made no mention about Lex having looked up any medical information (or the social information) in my fic at all. (Head, meet wall.)
I still don't see it as likely as being a social issue because of the Kandorian reaction to Zod's murder of Faora. If there was ever a time for societal niceties/cultural norms to break down as a whole, my feeling it that it would have been there, and that didn't happen. (But again, opinion.)
Also, I can't remember a time when the Fortress AI has canonically outright lied. (Withheld information, yes. Lied, no. I could be forgetting something, though. If I am, please let me know.)
My view of canon is that the Ship/Caves/Fortress AI has actually seemed fairly consistent in what it wants Clark to do. Consistency in a program that can adapt/learn generally does not indicate critical corruption or damage to said program, though. BrainIAC adapted to damage, but it bootstrapped a lot. I don't remember seeing similar happen with the AI.
Anyway, that's my basis for things. I totally agree with your logic and conclusions drawn according to each of the different/opposing starting points from evidence/assumptions :)
As for the cognitive dissonance -- you're right about the contradictory beliefs. Taking it one step further, I wasn't thinking too much about the possible cascade effects of what might happen if, say, belief X was 'weak evidence' for beliefs A, B, and C, or what issues might happen if the underlying beliefs that supported X remained unchanged. (The latter is actually very hard to be sure of in retrospect.)
I think you're right -- the re-evaluation of not-X to X through indirect means could still cause cognitive dissonance, depending on what else informed the veracity of W, Y, and Z. Some background knowledge farther up the line would effectively still have to be ignored, and that sort of disconnect could be very bad.
But yeah, still 'nicer' and probably less dissonant than changing X directly, when X is a belief informed by strong evidence/facts.
Man, this is starting to make my brain hurt. (Programming people is hard! *lol* ;) --I think I need some sleep now :-P
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment