She discusses with her TA Spike over the paradoxes encountered when trying to explain human consciousness, moral sense, altruism, and parental sacrifice.
In either case, is their behavior a product of Darwinian struggle, sometimes disguised as compassion or altruism, or can it spring from the soul in a relation with God?
Hilary's faith in God and her obsession with "goodness" stem from the fact that she got pregnant as a teenager and gave her baby girl Catherine up for adoption.
At the interview, she meets another job candidate, Amal, who seems to share Spike's view of human beings as innately self-interested.
But his timing is off, which causes the Krohl companies significant losses, which, in turn, earns Amal a firestorm of invective and a major demotion from analyst to computer drudge.
Whether compassion is disguised self-interest deployed instinctively as an evolutionary strategy, or whether it can exist as unalloyed self-sacrifice, becomes a major part of the "hard problem".
Cathy and 95 other children at her school are tested for how much compassion each child displays toward a woman they witness supposedly being subjected to electric shocks.
It was directed by Nicholas Hytner (his last work at the National Theatre) with the following cast: The production received mixed reviews, varying from "stimulating...rich" by Michael Billington of The Guardian and "elegantly interpreted" from The Standard's Henry Hitchings to "major disappointment" from Dominic Cavendish of The Daily Telegraph.
[4] The play was directed by Blanka Zizka, with the cast that featured Sarah Gliko (Hilary), Ross Beschler (Spike) and Shravan Amin (Amal).