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Momo is Still Not Real (But Memes Are)
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7774603" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>While I'm normally on board with providing increasingly precise definitions of words, and while I agree that there are subtle differences between empathy and sympathy, I'm going to have to rebel against your explanation. It does not require that I have experienced exactly the same experiences for me to have empathy for someone else. If that were the case, no empathy would be possible. But the perfect is not the enemy of the good. Our empathy may always be necessarily imperfect, but we all have imaginations and we can place ourselves in the shoes of others. I don't have to have lost a child to imagine the pain, trauma, and suffering of that. My empathy may be imperfect and perhaps it would never be as complete as if I'd had the same experience, but even if I had, it would still be incomplete because everyone's experience is there own. I reject the notion that individual experiences are so there own, that they represent an unbridgeable gulf for empathy. Not only do I think that is wrong based on my own experience, but the implications of that are ugly. </p><p></p><p>I put forth our capacity to tell stories as an example of how we breach the divide between us in order to have empathy in situations we've not directly experienced. And I consider that not only to be beautiful, but one of the noble justifications for our vain hobby.</p><p></p><p>I think I may actually have more empathy for Pauling than I have sympathy for her. There gets to be a point in her chain of behavior where to me she goes from being a distressed mother whom you could easily have sympathy for, to someone who is irrational to the point of insanity. There comes a point where I have no sympathy for people who are so convinced that they are right, that they do things that they know to be wrong because its some how justified by the beautiful goal that they have. I have more empathy for that than sympathy for that sort of thing. But, even if my sympathy wanes on account of her behavior, I'm not going to hold that up as anything but a failing on my part. I don't predicate compassion on agreement.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Honestly, it's hard for me to tell how much of this Momo Challenge is a real thing and not just a good story. I'd barely heard about it before this thread, and it certainly wasn't on the lips of my middle schoolers - who are usually on top of all the trends and fads. Earlier I said that its very difficult in a mass media age to know how much something that is in the news is in the news because its news worthy - that is the Momo Challenge hoax was a major thing impacting many people and therefore its worth reporting on - or else its in the news because it makes for good news - click bait, provocative, and so forth. We live in an age were the media, whether we are talking traditional media or alternative media sources or just people with a platform, needs to and generally does manufacture the news. There are tons of things I see in the news where I think, "Why is that in the news beyond the fact that having become news it will attract attention?" Now of course, just because I wasn't really effected or paying attention doesn't mean that it wasn't a thing to many millions, but my point is that news these days is manufactured for many reasons more than it is reported.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7774603, member: 4937"] While I'm normally on board with providing increasingly precise definitions of words, and while I agree that there are subtle differences between empathy and sympathy, I'm going to have to rebel against your explanation. It does not require that I have experienced exactly the same experiences for me to have empathy for someone else. If that were the case, no empathy would be possible. But the perfect is not the enemy of the good. Our empathy may always be necessarily imperfect, but we all have imaginations and we can place ourselves in the shoes of others. I don't have to have lost a child to imagine the pain, trauma, and suffering of that. My empathy may be imperfect and perhaps it would never be as complete as if I'd had the same experience, but even if I had, it would still be incomplete because everyone's experience is there own. I reject the notion that individual experiences are so there own, that they represent an unbridgeable gulf for empathy. Not only do I think that is wrong based on my own experience, but the implications of that are ugly. I put forth our capacity to tell stories as an example of how we breach the divide between us in order to have empathy in situations we've not directly experienced. And I consider that not only to be beautiful, but one of the noble justifications for our vain hobby. I think I may actually have more empathy for Pauling than I have sympathy for her. There gets to be a point in her chain of behavior where to me she goes from being a distressed mother whom you could easily have sympathy for, to someone who is irrational to the point of insanity. There comes a point where I have no sympathy for people who are so convinced that they are right, that they do things that they know to be wrong because its some how justified by the beautiful goal that they have. I have more empathy for that than sympathy for that sort of thing. But, even if my sympathy wanes on account of her behavior, I'm not going to hold that up as anything but a failing on my part. I don't predicate compassion on agreement. Honestly, it's hard for me to tell how much of this Momo Challenge is a real thing and not just a good story. I'd barely heard about it before this thread, and it certainly wasn't on the lips of my middle schoolers - who are usually on top of all the trends and fads. Earlier I said that its very difficult in a mass media age to know how much something that is in the news is in the news because its news worthy - that is the Momo Challenge hoax was a major thing impacting many people and therefore its worth reporting on - or else its in the news because it makes for good news - click bait, provocative, and so forth. We live in an age were the media, whether we are talking traditional media or alternative media sources or just people with a platform, needs to and generally does manufacture the news. There are tons of things I see in the news where I think, "Why is that in the news beyond the fact that having become news it will attract attention?" Now of course, just because I wasn't really effected or paying attention doesn't mean that it wasn't a thing to many millions, but my point is that news these days is manufactured for many reasons more than it is reported. [/QUOTE]
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