The“prisoner’s dilemma”illustrates that everyone is rationally thinking about maximizing their own interests and taking their own best strategies,but the end result is counterproductive.In Prisoner’s Dilemma Richard Powers describes multiformareas of dilemma;to lose balance;to make choices;and ask each other:what to do next?It is a master trope for relaying the permanent impasse or dilemma of cooperation versus defection.In most cases,the prisoner's dilemma is more about the number of defeats in the game,and even a major loss of society.Individual rationality is likely to be a collective disregard,and if everyone is acting on the principle of self-interest,it is often the result that everyone is lost.Powers expresses his philosophical insight:Until a cooperative instead of antagonistic solution is collectively agreed upon,we still remain imprisoned in an interminable and oppressive struggle and conflict decided by self-interest and rational control,which is also a moral response to historical consciousness of postmodernism.
Generosity:An Enhancement revolving around Thassadit Amzwar and the happiness gene in her body, concentrates on its appearance,research, publicity and exploiting of her happiness gene. It proposes the ethical conundrums: Are negative emotions like depression and anxiety no longer needed? Can a genetic marker dispose us toward happiness? Happiness should not be left to contingency and genes.Once materialized into a physical object which can be bought and sold like a commodity,the fundamental laws of ethics will collapse.
Cold Mountain is a physical and spiritual healing place,at the same time is Inman’s home and a refuge for his soul where he himself can retreat from the sufferings of the war.A redemptive journey to Cold Mounain which is fraught with physical and psychological hardships helps Inman to reconstruct the broken soul but Inman’s real redemption:an escape from a world where he has become so hopeless and meaningless can only obtain through death in the end.