Empathy to the Deserving – Sunday Vid, Sort Of…

June 25th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

I’m not going to embed or link to video today. This post is about a video, though.

I want to say something about the bus monitor Karen Klein and what’s happened because of a video made on a school bus. It says something about our empathy, what triggers our empathy, and what doesn’t trigger our empathy.

You might know the story. A grandmotherly bus monitor was singled out by a few thirteen-year boys. She was taunted, made fun of, and brought to tears. It was all captured on video, and put on Youtube.

People reacted.

Outrage. Emotional pain. Feelings of powerlessness.

A man in Canada, after seeing the video, thought this bus monitor deserved a vacation. Who deserves treatment like that anyway? Something should be done to make things right.

From that idea came the initiative to go further. Hey, this is 2012. There is enough of us connected, and emotionally attached to the situation. Certainly we actually can do something about it.

He started collecting donations.

He couldn’t change the fact that the thirteen-year-old boys had done something really stupid. He couldn’t change the torment the bus monitor went through or the public display that she had become. But with some help from other like-minded people, he could change things. He could at least get enough money together to give her the vacation she deserved after having to go through that.

Of the millions of viewers, a small percentage seemed to be willing to participate in his vision. And from those viewers that wanted to do something, contributions have poured in (continue to pour in?). Apparently the guy that set up the vacation account has collected enough to send maybe more than 120 bus monitors on the vacations they may very well deserve (if my math is off, please correct me).

If the job of bus monitor is really about enduring abuse similar to what was on the video, then certainly more than just this one bus monitor deserves a nice vacation. I mean, she can’t be the only one that has gone through this kind of abuse.

Sometimes a vacation break can put things into perspective, remind us of what’s important.

Apparently the boys have been reprimanded. One has written what I think is a sincere apology to her. The others may be following that example by now.

The parents of the boys probably feel terrible. It’s not like they wanted the world to look on their children in this way.

Thirteen-year-old boys can be really annoying. We’ve been trying for thousands upon thousands of years to turn thirteen-year-old boys into non-idiots – functioning, positive members of society. We have made up initiation rites, tribal dances, hunting parties, high school, all in the attempt to get them to smarten up.

They keep finding chances to be idiots.

Maybe it’s part of the hierarchy they find themselves in. If they feel empowered by treating others this way, then why would they even consider behaving any differently? What possible motivation could they have to change, when they seem to be enjoying themselves so much at the time, bringing discomfort to someone else?

Thirteen-year-old boys probably know how it feels to be bullied as well as any one of us.

A lot of internet video is watched alone. Our technological lifestyle has turned us into audiences of one. We are millions strong, all doing the same thing, isolated. the video of Karen Klein never really changes focus. She is almost always in middle of the shot, targeted, isolated. And in our audiences of one, when we see that experience on video, we feel it as much as watch it.

I’m really glad to know we live in a world where people can connect so immediately, and more importantly initiate action to make things right. Even if only a small fraction of all the people that saw the video did actually overcome the bystander effect, at least someone is trying to help someone. Giving Karen a vacation doesn’t solve the problem, but it shows that some people are willing to reach out, put some small effort into changing things.

But before we get too emotional about this, something more has to be said.

I think we need to ask ourselves why some cruelty has to be seen before we react to it.

Karen is one of us that had a bad experience. Her story is only different in that it was shared – it was caught on video and put on display for the world.

If we only react empathetically to the victims we actually see, then we are only really changing the smallest fraction of the victims of the world.

If we’re going to be emotional and rational about this, then we should think about the people we don’t see.

Our lives are becoming more and more public. We take our cues from our heroes. Modern day celebrities bare all for us, and act as examples. Their lives are incredibly public, out there for everyone to watch. We demand to know everything we can about them.

And we now reflect that, in our status updates, facebook timelines, personal youtube channels, and in the number of details we tick into the record about our loved ones, friends and family.

It has been projected that facebook may reach a billion people soon in 2012. Imagine being technically able to ‘friend’ a billion people. That’s a lot of attachment.

I think there may come a point in time when the pain of every victim of our idiocy is going to be on display.

Some of us seem to react to these things more that others, particularly when we’re emotionally triggered. Some of us even share in the struggle of the experience, and want to make things right.

Are we ready to share all of this with the world?

 

- – -

Aside – I meant to change the background in the image, put the youtube icon there instead. Unfortunately, when it comes to time-management, I’m a life-tard.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in art, Behaviour, Beyond Belief, education, empathy, ethics, psychology, story | Comments Off

Hierarchy in the City – Continued

June 10th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

A local minister I know called me a “religious sniper” some time ago. He was referring to my style of picking off religious topics from the vantage point of my website  - never really know where I am or where the fire is coming from, or what the target may be.

His comment was meant in light-hearted jest, I believe. Although I appreciate it and take it as a compliment, I don’t think I have the accuracy or precision to be a sniper. Snipers do tend to play a part in urban warfare, but that’s not how I see things right now. War is not a solution. It’s a marketing strategy.

And war is getting really old and making things really fragile. City life depends on trust, enormous amounts of trust. Our entire foundation can still be upturned by a few confident authorities with silver tongues, or individuals motivated by the merest whims.

I think of myself more as waving a shotgun around, hoping I might hit the broad side of some ancient barn. I’m worried about those mischievous, ephemeral spirits of the night, and I’m intent on, metaphorically, keeping them away from my daughter’s bedroom.

However, I’ve come to realize that either choice of weaponry, sniper rifle or shotgun, is actually pretty poor. I have my criticisms of religion but I have to realize that whatever its faults, it’s part of the world’s inheritance right now. It is a part of the house we live in. It may not be the foundation of the house that’s the problem. The problem is (almost always) people’s motivations, or the things that people think should be worshipped.

My intention was never to bring down the pyramid anyway, and any kind of personal firearm would only jeopardize the safety of the people within the building. Regardless of what you shoot at it, a pyramid continues. A pyramid isn’t that fragile and not so easy to deconstruct. Time fears the pyramids more than any god.

Here’s the lesson I’ve been thinking about when it comes to pyramids. It comes in part from Uxmal in Mexico. The lesson is about constructive persistence.

Uxmal is a city of the ancient Maya. The name can be translated as “Built-three-times”. The most dominant architectural part of the city is The House of the Magician, a temple at the top of a pyramid, the newest built on top of the old. The leader of the city built on what he had inherited, just as the last leader did. The leaders come and go. The pyramid lingers.

One intriguing feature of many of the Mayan pyramids is that even though each generation of builders wanted to add something, the older temples often enough remained visible and accessible. The builders rarely destroyed the old pyramid; they built around them and on top of them to make the structure bigger, often with a wider base and higher top.

When we reach new heights, we don’t destroy the old pyramids we’re standing on. We build bigger ones on top.

It doesn’t mean the new temple has to look like the old one, or that it even does the same job as the old one. But the past won’t go away just because someone finds a flaw in the engineering. Those old pyramids of power made it through the past despite being inconsistent, fragile, downright wrong in some places, or in bad need of repair.

We can borrow from all the cultures and aesthetics of the world now, but by doing so we are confirming the pyramids of the past and building on old foundations, making the whole thing more complicated. Whatever steps it takes to build the new and better pyramids, we’ll need to take into account all the new information that is available too.

New pyramids can’t be built from magic, but they can’t be built by firing bullets at them either.

If our future is to remain in the city, then our personal motivations have to be laid bare all the more.  The things that have implications for our behaviour will make such strange bedfellows. We can’t let the ancient motivations rule us with authority anymore. The view from those old temples is too low, too limited. Our motivations demand an even higher point of view.

One thing that does help me sleep easier at night is the thought that pyramids were often enough built as tombs. Pyramids, like cities, are places where gods go to die.

If the whole world is to embrace one big culture, and if everyone is adding to one big pyramid, it might be big enough to lay to rest the most sanctified of our motivations.

[I'll let you have fun with what that might be.]

What do you think?

 

- – -

Some Sources:

Uxmal – Wikipedia

Pyramid of the Magician – Wikipedia. A short retelling of the myth on how the pyramid was built (coincidentally, it has some striking similarities to the myth of Horus, and other hero tales)

Some great photos of Uxmal Ruins

History of Religious Criticism – from rationalevolution.net, a thorough, sometimes thick, outline that starts with the Protestant Reformation and ending with a neat graphic of the 50 most non-religious countries in the world today.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in art, Beyond Belief, ethics, god, irony, myth, psychology, story | Comments Off

Sunday TED: Hans Rosling on Religions and Babies

May 27th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

The world is having less babies?

Hans Rosling is fascinated by statistics and information. He has studied trends in the birth rates of countries around the world. He has put together a kind of story of the last 50 years that suggests we can have a healthy, robust world without buying into the belief that we need bigger and bigger families.

The love of statistics is a form of emerging aesthetics. Rosling uses a program that animates statistical trends. Rosling also sees statistics as a way to wade through the “river of myths” in which we live.

So, what does he have to say about Religions and Babies?

Women are having fewer and fewer babies. Why?

You don’t have to get rich to have fewer children. It looks like you need some social stability (less war) and some education.

Some Key Points:

High mortality rates = fast population growth

Stable lifestyles with less overall poverty = slower population growth

Births decrease when:

1. Children survive
2. Many children are not needed for labour
3. Women get education and join the labour force
4. Family planning is accessible

The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion, but it may not grow much higher after that.

“The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child.”

Religion has very little to do with the number of children in a family. We may believe religions are a cause, but something else is clearly going on as well. Economics and education say more than belief.

 

Earlier in this series I brought up the Myth of Growth. We often think of good economics or finances as growth in terms of percentages. We often assume that growth in families should just be expected. And yet all across the world, we are responding to a more stable, educated, and global lifestyle by having smaller families.

What do you think?

What do we desire more? – growth or balance?

- – -

Hans Rosling is a medical doctor, disease researcher, statistician and took part in the television documentary The Joy of Stats. Here is his wikipedia page, and here is another one of his TED talks (kind of similar to the one above, but more about life expectancies).

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in art, Beyond Belief, education, myth, psychology, Science, story | 2 Comments »

Sunday TED – Turning the World Inside Out with Art

May 20th, 2012   by   Andrew

I picked today’s TED talk because of this one image.  In Israel, a group set up a photobooth. People walking by were invited to get their photo taken. The printed photos inspired a mass demonstration (well, a group demonstration), with people waving signs of themselves in the air.

What were they demonstrating?

Well, themselves.

Not political leaders or party colours. Not religious zealotry, in particular. The demonstration was an attempt to make themselves their message.

The artist JR wants to turn the world inside out. He is fascinated with faces and large, gripping installations. In a sense, he is making individuals into art, and getting individuals to take part in how they are seen by the world. Individuals become part of the recognized environment.

I think people demonstrating for themselves rather than for their leaders or their political ideologies might be a good start.

JR had a TED Prize wish: a worldwide photo project to show the world its true face. To see what has come of his wish, check out the Inside Out Project.

What do you think?

Is the world changing?

- – -

Aside: apparently JR messed up a little in the geography of one of his stories. See if you can spot it.

Tags: , ,
Posted in art, Behaviour, Beyond Belief, empathy, psychology, story | Comments Off

Mother’s Day Vid – Storytelling

May 13th, 2012   by   Andrew

My parents have always been very patient with me, and I have yet to find a worthy repayment for that patience. Obedience only goes so far. Gratitude is nice, but kind of empty without action. I find now that the best thing I can give them is my full attention, whenever I can.

The storyteller Maurice Sendak died last week. He wrote books about kids that did things wrong, and about people that weren’t always living happy, proper lives. He didn’t push on his readers how children should behave but instead showed us as we are. He understood that our lives are made up of both fact and fiction, but neither have the final say on what we should do with our lives.

“Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.” ~ Maurice Sendak

Max is a good example. At the start of his story, he has been acting wild and has been sent to his room. It might not be how he should behave, but sometimes a story has to start somewhere.

 

“Maurice Sendak was strikingly honest. His art gave us a fantastical but unromanticized reminder of what childhood truly felt like. We are all honored to have been briefly invited into his world.” ~ Stephen Colbert

Even though I was pretty sure at one point that I knew everything important, Mom has always shown me through stories that it is what I don’t know that is always more important. That’s why now, more than ever in my life, I try to listen and learn from her.

In this short video, Sendak talks tries to answer “Why bother being born?”, “Why bother to work?”, and why his dog shows up in most of his books.

Maurice Sendak was a lucky man and good hero to mimic. He committed himself to his work and to his life. He didn’t always take himself too seriously. He found his bliss.

Another good video – Dresden Dolls did a cover of Carole King’s version of Maurice Sendak’s story about Pierre, the boy that didn’t care.

Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in art, Behaviour, Beyond Belief, book review, psychology, purpose, story, writing | Comments Off

Sunday Vid – Nontheistic Gods

May 6th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

Evid3nc3 has documented a deeply personal spiritual journey on youtube. He also has a blog site where the conversation can get pretty intense.

If you haven’t yet take the time, I would urge you to explore his videos.  He has put so much effort and time into his series hoping to connect in particular with Christians. Although he is no longer religious, he wanted to demonstrate his sincerity through the videos, and express just how deep his beliefs once were. His journey could be useful for others, too.

Since my main interest is in nontheistic gods, I thought I would use the chapter from Evid3nce’s story entitled Nontheistic Gods. 

Some Points:

On reading the story Jonathan Livingston Seagull (I particularly like some of his wording in his narration):

“… My mind mapped my own experiences and the entities in my own life to the stories’ symbols…”

“… The church [at the time] was still the only organization through which I felt I could dependably further my philosophical identity and the philosophical identities of other people, despite being an atheist…”

After examining Pantheism, Panentheism, Panpsychism and Deism:

“… I’d learned my lesson with Theism, and I did not cling to any of these hypotheses too strongly…”

 

(This particular video doesn’t directly address my personal interest in nontheistic gods – the psychological process of embodying personal (or social) motivations, then granting them authority or agency, and then wrestling with them. But, that’s the story I’m working on, and it isn’t Evid3nc3′s story.)

 

Inspired by the three quotes above, I have three questions for you readers. You don’t have to answer all three, but please play with them.

1. Have you ever read a story that you felt ‘mapped out’ your own personal experiences or situations symbolically in the way that Evid3nc3 describes? What was the story? Do you still feel the same way?

2. At the time, Evid3nc3 felt his personal identity was wrapped up in the group he was a part of. In a sense, they defined who he was, and he didn’t have any alternatives to go to. Is this still the case for de-converting members? Are there other places to go, groups to be a part of?

3. Evid3nc3 was able to explore ideas without adopting them as his truth. It sounds like he wants to sing, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Once the spell of a defining story is broken, do you think such a level of trust could ever be adopted again? And could the act of breaking the spell ever be a part of the stories we live by? (yes, I’m trying to link ideas to a past post)

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in art, Belief, Beyond Belief, god, psychology, purpose, Religion, story | 6 Comments »

    Next Page »