“our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family.”
Is there a 'not' in there that doesn't belong?
Empathy is an interesting subject. It goes beyond just feeling for others, since we actively strive to get ourselves in situations where others hurt and we hurt with them. I'm talking for example about sad movies, tragedies, sad music, and so on. I mean, why would we actively want to watch I, Tonya, or 12 years a slave? It doesn't make any sense. We don't enjoy seeing those people suffer, and we can't help them right now, so why do we do it? The reasons are many, but one I think is that it's like a muscle that needs to be flexed, since it exists. I mean, you wouldn't want to never need to use your legs, even if it were more comfortable, even if a machine did all the walking for you, you would sometimes feel the need to flex your muscles. So maybe similarly, if you have a region in your brain that was made to empathize, maybe you feel the need to use it, and so you seek these artistic experiences.
Thankfully, for Lucas (and those who he deems unattractive), his empathic abilities won’t always be that limited
They will grow in tandem with his lying abilities, apparently!
Oh no ... Bloom is against empathy! That 'not' is definitely meant to be there, I am afraid. But, I am with you in this one. I also think it is misplaced!
I read a while ago, regarding fear though, that among other species humans are unique in the way that we seek experiences which give rise fear. It seems to me this applies to other 'negative' emotions as well! I don't know about you, personally, but I don't. I would love to watch Precious and 12 Years a Slave except I am afraid of how sad the stories are!
😬Thank you for stopping by Alexander 😊
Have a wonderful week.
Ah, thanks for clarifying, cos I was confused, given the overall point you were making in the text, and I didn't know if the quote got an extra 'not' from you!
Yeah it's interesting that some people will seek, say, sad movies, and others will avoid them cos they don't wanna be sad. I know depressed people sometimes seek info that verifies their internal state. But I don't think people who liked 12 years a slave are all depressed! So it's an interesting topic, and perhaps one you can treat in the future!
I have amended my text after the observation you made (getting confused with the wording). If you got confused, others might have got too!
Thank you for informing me about that :)
Always my pleasure to make more work for you :D
LOL
Just wanted to comment on your idea that we put ourselves in the place of others, in art, so we can hurt with them. Not me. Not anymore. It actually does hurt too much. Life has enough of that :)
Yeah it's precisely because I know people who feel like you in real life, which is why I asked. It's interesting to study this both psychologically and historically; historically, since tragedies always existed and were popular (were, in fact, perhaps the earliest form of play), and people back then had much more troubles that we today do, objectively, I guess. Are we becoming more Eloi? Were they more Morlock?
I thought about classic Greek tragedy as I wrote that response--even looked up (you know me, I look stuff up) catharsis. Perhaps we're not becoming more effete--perhaps the use of tragedy is becoming more graphic, more exploitative. Instead of asking us to use our imaginations to identify with a protagonist, modern film makers don't trust our imaginations. They lay the gore before us. They disembowel, literally. Their approach to tragedy is not poetic--it's brutal. Just a few thoughts your comment generated :)
Edit: Perhaps I should add that there was significant tragedy in my childhood. So I think I had my fill early on. I got through it OK, but it was all around me and others suffered. Kind of made a difference in my psyche, I think.
I don't know. Back in the day, they accused Tarantino of being graphic. To this day, I don't know why he didn't simply reply "Shakespeare". Or any of his works, like "Titus Andronicus". Slaughtering an enemy's children and baking them into a pie and feeding them to him? Check! And they teach these stuff to kids at school. (Well, I don't know about Titus specifically, but they do teach the Bible and that's worse even than Shakespeare.)
I agree and disagree depending on the movie. Many will think Oldboy (the Asian version; but the American isn't bad either) is brutal and gory. I think it's a classic, and I think there's poetry in the gore and the story. So it's hard to say.
Sorry to hear about your personal experience. That might of course have played a role. In essence, we are most of us pretty disengaged from real physical suffering akin to the things portrayed in movies, it's all like a videogame to us now, so people are perhaps having the wrong reaction to them. I can imagine what the Nazi Zombie movie would look like to people who've gone through the real deal. But to the rest of the world now, it's mere entertainment.