I would argue the inability to feel emotions makes someone not fully human, and Lois Lowry's The Giver shows the high cost of suppressing emotion. Without emotions, we are not really that different from robots, and are easily led and controlled. Emotions motivate us and give us our drive. When we are stripped of these, as the people in the story are, the Elders can do what they please. After all, it takes a certain amount of anger to revolt. In the story, people have been deprived of not just the opportunity to be unhappy, but also the opportunity to be happy. They do not experience envy or jealousy, it appears, but they also do not experience love or sexual desire. Only when the Giver shares memories of love and pain does Jonah understand what he and the community have been missing. It does not seem possible to experience positive emotions without also being able to experience negative emotions. Even negative emotions can lead us to a good result, such as overthrowing a tyrant or leaving a bad relationship. In the story, the people have no such choices because they cannot feel anything. To feel is to be human.
As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
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