A long time ago in my first college english class Dr. Bar lectured on surrogate emotions (what he really called it is not fit to print). That lesson has stuck with me through the years and I think it is one of the things that allows us to so easily accept the small roll we have in life with out craving a real purpose in life.
His point was that we often secretly relish other peoples disasters because we can feel the rush of strong emotion without really having lost anything. I think that this applies to more than just tragedy. We have coddled our self's in the the rush of victory, love, tragedy, heroism, and friendship that is not our own. I would like to say this is just our TV and movies that we use to surrogate emotions (again I am not using the word that really fits) but it is bigger than just that.
Facebook provides us with a thousand peaces of friends that we know only fragments of. It is as if we had one friend that knew all our secrets, fears and loves but this person has been split into a thousand people each holding a fragment of what a real friend would be. While Movies, TV and the internet provide most of this pseudo emotions and relationships we do the same thing in our real lives and this is the worst part.
In the area of romantic relationships most of us would not have an actual "friend with benefits" however most of us have the equivalent on the emotional level. We seek counsel and spend time with "friends" in order to pacify our real logging for companionship. Many of use would never admit to this and would come up with a thousand real legitimate reasons. I wonder if these excuses are all just a front so well constructed that we ourselves do not realize what it covers.
I have recently have taken a very detached view of the news and have been criticized for not caring about things that matter. However my passionate response to most "news" would do little other than making me feel like I had taken a stand on a matter of importance. If a fireman saves a life in New York and i read about and even mentally praise him I feel as if I had actually had a part in the rescue. While I do admire noble deeds and sympathize with others disasters I would rather have the passion to personally help someone or thank someone for a good deed personally than to only empathize.
What is the answer to this problem? Sadly on one of us can solve this problem on our own. If anyone was to cast off all the fragmented relationships, empathy of others pain and heroism and seek to feel and do all these things purely and personally their passion would be so direct that they would be labeled a complete maverick. They would find it hard to interface with the calm content world that we live in. It would be akin to setting a man pulled from the Sahara desert in a room full of tiny glasses of water. Unless we are content to wait and to hope that the world will change we must ask for the strength and grace of God to be the man who is thirsty for the full drought of life rather than the small bits that are safe for us to take.
1 comment:
I agree with you for the most part, but I don't think we can discount the power of empathy either. It is a good thing to try to put yourself in another's shoes, and it makes you more likely to take action when the time comes. The problem is not when we are moved to tears by someone else's heroism. The problem is when we assume someone else will be heroic and that we, therefore, don't need to. It's the bystander effect. When we get to this place, we often cease to empathize. We feel a certain vague satisfaction when we hear of a noble action, but we are no longer captivated by the stories of others. This deadness, I would argue, puts us far further than empathy from acting to create real relationships and help real people. To use your Facebook scenario, how many people really get emotional over what they see on Facebook? I've seen very few. They may be amused or mildly interested - nothing more. You're right in saying that we use social media to fill emotional needs in inappropriate ways, but it isn't really the fault of social media. I'm taking the time right now, for example, to take more than a passing interest in your thoughts and actually respond to them. This is good. The problem is when we pass over the humanity of the person at the other screen. The problem is when we hear about that fireman and have no desire to be like him. The problem is when we cease to see stories as such and view them instead as mere lists of facts. The problem is not empathy, but the lack of it.
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