Sympathy vs. Empathy

Sympathy and empathy are often thought to be the same emotion but they are incredibly different. Sympathy is feeling for someone else's loss whereas empathy is the ability to understand and share someone else's emotions. Empathy helps us connect to people where sympathy cannot. In Zizek's lecture, he talks about the idea of donating to less fortunate or buying something that is advertised to help someone. "You don't just buy a coffee in the consumer act. You buy your redemption from only being a consumer... you fulfill a series of ethical duties" (Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce) . This charity isn't a bad thing but it make people think they did their part and they are done. It's putting a bandage over a bullet wound. It is out of sight and you did something but the problem is still there. Charity comes out of sympathy instead of empathy. If people helped out of empathy they would have to experience what these other people are going through. They would have to go grow coffee beans grown under awful conditions. After they understand what these people go through they can help fix it. Krznaric's lecture on The Power of Outrospection explains how he believes this idea would help us connect with out fellow humans. "We need, for example, empathy museums. A place which is not about dusty exhibits... but an experiential and conversational public space. Where you walk in and in the first room there is a human library where you can borrow people for conversation" (Krznaric, The Power of Outrospection). These empathy museums would allow us to understand each other and connect on a different level. Someone who sees the world one way might hear a story from someone they have nothing in common with and it changes their whole perspective.

Everyone is able to experience empathy at some level. Rifkin studied babies and came up with the conclusion that we all have to experience empathy. "We are actually soft wired to actually experience an other's plights as if we are experiencing it ourselves" (Rifkin, The Empathic Civilzation). People are programed from birth to feel empathy. It is how people communicate before developing a common language. Non-verbal cues and facial expressions can carry whole conversations and convey complex emotions. Others are able to understand this through empathy. They are able to perceive the emotion, understand, and even feel it through empathy. This connects everyone even when people are constantly being separated into different categories. "We still educate children by batches; we put them through the system by age group... Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are" (Robinson,Changing Education Paradigms). Age is not the only thing these kids have in common. The opposite could be true as well. Maybe age is the only thing these kids have in common. The point is that it doesn't matter how people are grouped. Everyone can share connections.

Sharing Art

Art in all forms has been a way of bringing people together and invoking an emotion. Art will always be used for that, but the way people view art has been changing. There used to be an elite culture associated with arts. The artists were rich and the people who viewed art were too. In order to have the supplies to paint or make a film, someone would need a lot money. Then when the art was displayed in a gallery or in a concert hall, people would dress in their finest clothes and pay to go see it. In Presspauseplay, Moby says "50 years ago, people didn't make things. People would go to photography exhibits. They would go to record fairs. They would watch movies. Now everyone is a photographer. Everyone is a musician. Anyone can make a film". The elite culture has disappeared. Everyone has access to the tools to make a more or paint an amazing picture. And now everyone can see the art. Art is shared with everyone. Sean Parker, co-creator of Napster tells interviewers "the vision behind Napster, in the very early stages, was to just come with a system that made sharing of mp3's so easy that a housewife or grandmother in Iowa could do it". Music is illegally and legally downloaded everyday all over the world. We all have the means to do it and music can reach many more people.

Is this widespread access a bad thing? If everyone can make videos and posts them, how do we know which ones are good? Andrew Keen says "a you Hitchcock or young Scorsese wouldn't make into the movie business today. They'd slap up their films onto YouTube and it would get lost in the ocean of garbage". It may be harder to stand out but it doesn't make the art any less important. Every video means something to the person creating it even if it just a good memory now. Art is made to capture a moment or emotion and that is what all of the YouTube videos do. They are not all Golden Globe winners but they are art. Another debate in the advancing world is if a computer can be considered an instrument. Almost every imperfect sound recorded can be fixed with computer editing and many artist depend on that. Nick Sansano is a music producer and sees this happen more often than not. "Younger musicians and some older ones... rely too much on technology. They give a sub-par performance and expect the technology to compensate for it..." (Nick Sansano). I think it is still music. It is still an idea that people are choosing to share with the world. It is different but that doesn't make it bad. There is a lot to be said for those people who can play an instrument exceptionally well and produce record without any help. It is hard and they will always be admired for being able to do that. Those people who aren't that talented might have the same passion but are unable to express it. That is where technology helps. It allows people that are not as talented to still express themselves in the way they want. Human error is no longer our sole limitation.

PressPausePlay

I have never been a film person. I don't sit still long enough to really watch a whole movie let alone analyze it. That being said, I found the movie we started today, PressPausePlay, very interesting. It brought up a lot of good points that a lot of people are interested in. With everyone being able to make music on their computers today, how do producers stay in business. Recently there has been a hipster fad, where we are almost going back in time. Records are in and the classics are better than ever. People have always had respect for classic and timeless musicians but they listened to more current music. With this hipster era, producing music in a studio makes more sense. They want the 'old sound' instead of the more electronic new sound. I don't know where I fall in the debate. I like both the new and the old ways of making music. They can both create great music that can reach thousands of people.

It also gives people an overload of options. We are exposed to so many types of art, good and bad, through media. A terribly filmed video might go viral on YouTube while a great one is only viewed a handful of times. How do we as a society decide what is good and what is bad? There are personal preferences and it changes depending on the mood of that person. How are people able to stand out against everyone else? Today celebrities have to have a huge social media base to stay at their popularity level. If they hide from the media and don't constently promote themselves to their fans they will fade away. The attention span of society today has shrunk. We only watch something for as long as it entertains us. Then we move on to the next piece and forget we ever saw the first. The overload of artwork in various forms makes it a lot harder for people to stand on their own and get the worlds attention.

Finishing the Ceremony!

We finished Ceremony!! Some of my questions are answered but I still have so many. There are two parts that confuse me the most. The first is when Robert comes to visit Tayo. "'They want you to come home. They are worried about you. They think you might need the doctors again... Old man Ku'oosh and some of the others are wondering too why you haven't come. They thought maybe there might be something you should tell them...And Emo is has been saying things about you. He's been talking about how you went crazy and are alone out here. He talks bullshit about caves and animals'" (Silko 228). I started to question the reality of Tayo's situation. Robert is concerned about Tayo but he doesn't want to agree with Emo. Does he secretly agree with him? Is Tayo really imagining the spotted cattle? Most of the novel is through Tayo's perspective and there is no way to tell how reliable he is. There are points where he is more clear than others but I don't know if what he says is true or only what he believes is true. Tayo could be running around the open spaces chasing imaginary cattle and talking to himself. Maybe Emo is the more sane one of the two.

The other part that confused me was when Emo, Pinkie and Leroy attack Harley. The whole story that Tayo tells seems a little off. I understand that Emo is somewhat evil and doesn't like Tayo because he is a racist but would he go that far? They kidnapped and tied Harley up. "Pinkie held [Harley's] leg, and Leroy cut a whorl from the bottom of his big toe. Harley screamed hoarsely; the sound trailed off to a groan" (Silko 251). They were all friends!? How can someone do this to someone they were friends with? The they just laugh and leave. Tayo doesn't kill Emo because he can resist witchery and he is on the path to finishing his ceremony. I question the reality of the whole encounter. Tayo is dehydrated, exhausted and hasn't eaten in a day or so. Anyone can start to imagine things after being out in the desert all day.

The Spotted Cattle

In Ceremony  Tayo is represented by the spotted cattle. Josiah takes care of the cattle  in the beginning and he enlists Tayo to help care for them. Tayo has always been lost and alone and taking care of the cattle would help him find himself. By caring for the cattle, Tayo was caring for himself. When Tayo went to war with Rocky he lost himself again. His native ways didn't work with warfare. How were the Japanese any different than him? They were all beings on Earth from mother nature. They were all human. While Tayo was away the cattle ran off. They were as lost as Tayo. Tayo is sick and feels invisible when he returns. He lost himself and doesn't feel alive or human.

Tayo talks to Benito, a healer, and decides he needs to search for his lost cows. He headed out on his journey and found them. "The spotted cattle wouldn't be lost any more, scattered through his dreams, driven by his hesitation to admit they had been stolen, that the land - all of it - had been stolen from them" (SILKO 192). Tayo is realizing that he needs the cattle to be happy and cure himself. The cattle needs to be taken care of in order to feel better. Tayo is finally taking care of himself and trying to get better instead of letting the pain be dulled by alcohol. He has denied the pain for so long and tried to ignore it until it goes away. His pain won't go away and Tayo finally does something about it. The other veterans may be happy to drink their lives away but Tayo wants better and to get it he has to find himself. Not the man he was before the war but the man he is now. War and life changed him and the cattle grew with him. They were taken by a white rancher and had a new experience. Now they are back with Tayo who will care for them.  

A Marine Visit

Clay was different than I expected. He wasn't a normal guest speaker but what is normal? He didn't have a plan of what he wanted to say and he was clearly nervous. Not a lot of the presentation was about his tours and time in the military. Some of his training came up and it sounded incredible. I can't even imagine doing half of what he had to. He focused more of his talk on how to live. People like telling others what they can and can't do. Clay liked proving these people wrong. It is a great but hard way to live. I understand never giving up on what you want but proving everyone wrong is a hard task. I don't think that everything someone tells you you can't do has to be disproved. The ones that matter to the individual do. For example, if someone told me I couldn't rock climb to the top of a mountain I would agree with them. I have no desire to do it and I am terrified of rock climbing. If someone told me I could never run marathon or get into a specific college, however, I would prove them wrong. Those are things that I want. They may not be my deepest desires but I know if I tried I could reach them no matter what people say. I am stubborn that way and I think a lot of people are now. Today, so many people focus on following their own path instead of doing what others say. There are exceptions to the rule but from a young age we are trained to make our own decisions. Make our own path. I loved this point and think it is important for everyone to fight for what they believe in their own way. Clay went and fought in war but anyone can fight to prove something.

Clay also talked about PTSD. I thought he would have talked more about it because it is a large theme in Ceremony but he didn't. His story about the girl. I was talking to my table group after and we were all in awe. I completely understand why he questions what he did so much. I don't mean to say he made the wrong choice. He saved all of the strangers in the cafe and his fellow marines. It could have played out so differently if he never pulled the trigger. I don't know how I would live with myself if I was put in that situation. He said how if he had a do-over he would have gone and died with the girl. Sacrificing himself for the people in the cafe. Soldiers talk about losing part of themselves when they are forced to hurt or kill women and children. It may be the right call but they see someone they know in the person they killed. It might be their wife, son, daughter, cousin or anyone. To me this is what PTSD is. When something traumatic happens, like in war, you lose part of yourself.

Ceremony: Step by Step

Ceremony, like most novels, has multiple meanings in every passage and character. Night Swan and Josiah have huge influences on Tayo and represent much more than people he met. Night Swan on the surface is a prostitute that the village people hate. Every woman fears that her husband will visit her and them men don't respect her because to them she is only an object of temptation. She is nothing but trouble. Josiah was watched and criticized for going to Night Swan but they had something more than an affair. Through Josiah, and then Tayo, Night Swan reviles who she is. She represents confidence and independence specifically in women. Women throughout the novel are seen as objects to be possessed. Women are prizes. Night Swan isn't a prize. She slept with a married man who threatened her when his wife found out and never flinched. She calmly took his hateful comments and replied with the truth. He was just as at fault as she was but he preferred to blame her. He wanted to live in a lie but she was always the truth. There are hints that she is one of Tayo's healers in the novel and I think she helps him discover the truths he's been trying to hide underneath lies. 

Josiah is the only father figure Tayo has his entire life. Robert is there but Auntie would never let him father Tayo. Tayo feels responsibility towards Josiah and feels guilty for going to leaving Josiah with the cattle when he leaves for the war. Josiah is the bachelor and not the perfect man but he is a good one. He takes care of Tayo like the cattle. Josiah's dream is to raise the perfect desert cattle that they can live off of. He knows it will be hard but Josiah wants the cattle to teach him how to survive. Animals survive in the desert and drought and Josiah with Tayo will learn too. Josiah is Tayo's guide in life. Josiah never lies about how hard caring for cattle is going to be but he wants Tayo to help. Josiah helps Tayo see the balance in life and find his own place in it.