#classroom notes

For context, the tape we were watching was a sample career counseling interview. This is a course I was required to take, not for my program, but because my academic supervisor thinks it would be beneficial for me to pursue an LPC license. Which, granted, I’m not sure if I want, but if I hadn’t taken that course I wouldn’t have seen this video.

In the interview, there’s a point where the counselor asks the guy role-playing his client about having any favorite characters or characters he identified with. The guy mentions Michelangelo because he’s funny and laid-back. My notes are as follows:

Interesting thing about the guy saying Michelangelo was his favorite turtle—Mikey is the one who is often characterized as “brilliant, but lazy.”

o   He’s kind of a silly character, which often distracts people from his perceptiveness and empathy. Sometimes he goes too far with his jokes or can be insensitive—particularly in the 2003 cartoon where he frequently shook his brother Raphael up by pressing his buttons, and once even seriously flipped him out by pretending to be severely hurt despite that not being the case. (The Shredder Strikes)

o   He’s also fairly heavily coded as having ADHD—to the point that the most recent adaptation made that canon.

o   His weapon is the nunchaku, which takes a huge amount of skill to wield even one, yet he uses two fairly well, proficiently at fifteen.

o   Has an unconventional way of looking at the world, which often lets him come up with solutions his brothers, who are comparatively less out-of-the-box, sometimes don’t think of. (Notes from the Underground, Touch and Go) This is also what lets him figure out what is going on with Leonardo in the fourth season of the 2003 series, where his brothers don’t put it together.

Given the age of the guy in the video, he likely saw either the 1980′s series, or the 2003 series. At the time, I assumed he saw the ‘87 because freaks like me were the only ones who saw 2003 and liked it, sarcasm voice on freaks like me.

The boldface citations were added after the fact, but these were the specific episodes I was thinking about when I wrote this. Because for whatever reason, it seems like it’s easy to dismiss 2003 Mikey’s complexity in favor of saying he was only ever “just” the funny one. If the series were made today, I’d say it’s because audiences seem to like having all the subtext and characterization spoonfed to them a la Beauty and the Beast (2017) because it’s like...a plothole or something otherwise. But for the early 2000′s and I myself having been a child at the time who was barely even aware that Leo was getting “official” arcs, I got nothing. Shell, maybe it’s just because he was popular with younger viewers.

From my perspective, I think it’s fairly obvious he had to have been more than that, because I don’t know that so many kids could have connected with him if he’d “only” been the funny one. I don’t know that my youngest sister could have connected with him if he’d “only” been the funny one, and I wonder if maybe the guy in the video connected with him for something other than “just” being the funny one.

Again, I don’t know for a fact which version the guy saw. My observations are just restricted to the 2003 because, TV Tropes aside, 2003 is the main one I have familiarity with, and barring a few issues from the City at War arc of the Mirage comics, the only one I was familiar with at the time I wrote these notes.

  The Categorical Imperative (CI) is based around a set of four or five rules that are a starting point to building your own set of Ten or more Commandments, that come from good will or good intentions, and from duty or principles; they are necessitated on trust, which means you cannot lie or make any exceptions to the established set of rules. Or else it will lead to contradiction within. The main point of the categorical imperative is to take responsibility for one’s own actions via free will. This means that for moral conduct to be carried out, one must identify and negate or eliminate a “hypothetical imperative” or moral wrong, in order to have a CI leading to good conduct.  In layperson’s terms, this means that you think before you act! To simply put, the categorical imperative is based on Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction, except applied to moral codes. Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest philosophers in the western tradition, as well as historian and anthropologist, believed that one cannot have freedom without responsibility.  

Kant’s Categorical Imperative:

Rule #1: The Formulation of universal Law or Motivation - Say you're walking down the street, and you see a senior citizen crossing the street, and you decide to help them. Are you doing this because you: A) Help the senior citizen in the prospect that they will offer you money for the help? B) Help the senior citizen because it is the right thing to do, insofar as it is responsible?

Rule #2 The Formulation of Natural Law or Reason - At this stage, the individual is to assess the two criterion, in the universality test. This is achieved through a thought experiment, to see if the act itself is based on good will or praiseworthiness and duty. Now in the case of act A, if everyone did it for the sake of reward, it would be of bad intention, and not dutiful, because it means that you are not only thinking about yourself all the time, but you are taking advantage of the integrity of the person in question. Therefore, case A is to be negated. In the case of act B, it is very obvious that this is the right answer, for it is consistent with good will and duty as it is based on responsibility, and can be universalized into a commandment. Therefore case be is to affirmed.

Rule#3: The Formulation of Ends-in-themselves or Empathy - This is the most crucial of all the rules. This law requires that you treat others as "ends-in-themselves" and never a means to an end. What that entails is, you show respect for the lives, well-being and autonomy of others. This means that you show mutual respect and understanding for their values, rights, beliefs, race, ethnicity, ideals and etc. Why we should do this is because if we did not, no one would respect yours or my own rights. In other words, this law is about building trust among others. Hence, this law applies to everyone and is the most universal of all the laws and is the foundation for modern human rights, and which all the laws have to be consistent with, along with duty and good will. Not to mention that, going back to action B, that rule or maxim is to be adapted since it is showing respect for the senior citizen's life, and integrity.