sistermagpie | What's my motivation?

I've been in this mood where it's impossible for me to post anything--and naturally everybody is posting interesting things to which I then have nothing to contribute. Also I've had a headache for two days. I considered skipping my dance class but it turns out, that made it better.:-) It's a computer headache, I think, from my shoulders being tense. Yuck. Whine whine. So I'm having trouble being coherent, but if you dare,

There have been a few discussions recently that touch on motivation and context in terms of judging actions. Personally, I fall on the side of seeing actions themselves as neutral, with motivation and context being the things by which they can be judged good or bad. However--and this is the way I sometimes see this argument used in a way I think isn't really right--the point is you have to look at every action individually, and two people who agree that context and motivation matters can still disagree on how this reflects on any particular action. There are some actions where the chances of context justifying the action are pretty slim-I might be able to hypothetically come up with a weird situation where raping a child is the only thing that will prevent the earth from exploding, but in real life, child-rape is probably always going to be bad.

Anyway, it got me thinking a lot about motivation, maybe because I just tend to think about it anyway. My own motivations are usually pretty selfish--when I do the right thing it's more often because I can't find any other way to keep myself from being in the wrong, rather than being passionately enthusiastic about doing something right, if that makes sense. Basically, I think I spend more time not doing wrong than I do doing right. Like, when it comes to my job I've always felt like I needed to feel like I was contributing something positive to people, no matter how small, rather than change or fix the world.

Anyway, I tend to be hyper-self-analytical about what I'm doing, and I've usually discovered that whatever I do I probably have multiple motivations for it. That's why, I think, I often find myself at odds with the motivations assigned to characters in HP canon, since those characters also seem to be complex that way. I mean, you've got a system where being good is, at base, defined by supporting our hero, because he stands against Voldemort. But that puts the heroes in a sort of dangerous position, because it's so easy for them to use "fighting Voldemort" or “helping Harry” as a blanket motivation for everything. (I think James Potter is an example of this, for instance, without the Harry part.) But I think if you look at their actions, it's much more complex. The “official” motivations don't always match up with what they actually do...which is why I like to really look to the action to figure out the true motivation. Two people can do the same thing with completely different motivations, and there are so many layers to any given motivation anyway. There's what the person is trying to achieve, and for whom, and then there's who they are on a primal level and want they are trying to get for themselves or think they're doing. It's very…complicated. People are. Yes. Quite. Indeed.

Also, I'm watching Bullshit, which is doing conspiracy theories and ESP. I will never understand conspiracy theorists. Well, I do, but it's just so sad. Everybody needs to accept the fact that the world is chaos, and amazing things can be done by a whack job with a lot of nerve and a little luck. It really doesn't take a huge conspiracy to kill a president or destroy some buildings. In fact, keeping those conspiracies under wraps would be a lot more impossible than those things.

Secondly, on psychics, I'm going to randomly say that I generally don't like the psychic!detective premise, like on that new show, Medium. Just as a viewer, I can't stand it because it's so fake in terms of plot. Why does the ghost show up and tell the psychic just enough for it to be cool, but not anything useful like who murdered them, where and why? Give me Numb3rs please!

Nemesis
Indeed, you are 87% erudite, 62% sensual, 29% martial, and 70% saturnine.

This daughter of the Greek Goddess Nyx was initially thought of as a harsh force of opposition. However, she was later softened to represent the feeling of just resentment or righteous anger against those who committed crimes with apparent impunity, or who had inordinate good fortune.

Her name, Nemesis, means "she who distributes or deals out". And that she did. As she was the one directing human affairs in such a way as to maintain equilibrium of happiness and unhappiness, she could bring about losses and suffering if you made the impression of being “too” happy.

Being the one who checked extravagant favours by Tyche (or Fortuna, as the Romans called her), she was regarded as an avenging or punishing divinity, so it only makes sense that the Goddess of Punishment, Poena, was an attendant of Nemesis.

Despise all this suffering and vengeance, she is also said to have been as beautiful as Aphrodite. Her attributes were, among others, a rein, a sword, or a balance.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 50% on erudite

You scored higher than 0% on sensual

You scored higher than 0% on martial

You scored higher than 88% on saturnine

Link: The Mythological Goddess Test written by Nitsuki on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Ki-lin
You scored 60% Esotericism, 24% Power, and 4% Malevolence!

A mythical being of Chinese mythology, comparable with the Western unicorn. Ki-lin personifies all that is good, pure, and peaceful. It lives in paradise and only visits the world at the birth of a wise philosopher. The unicorn, which can become one thousand years old, is portrayed as a deer with one horn, the tail of an ox, the hooves of a horse, and a body covered with the scales of a fish. It is one of the four Ling.