I’ve been watching the coverage of the Chilean miners being rescued and it’s made me ponder something. I don’t think I’m the only person who has felt torn while watching this. I’m very glad to know they are being rescued. I’m glad that in 2010, 33 men’s lives matter enough to bring together the funding, engineering and global concern that this disaster has engendered.
However, I watched footage of the 6th miner being hauled up. The close-up of his wife, scared into stone, not breathing, waiting, their reunion, and I thought…. fuck, where is our shame? This is private emotion. Her stricken face shouldn’t be beamed all over the world for our entertainment / vicarious thrill / schadenfreude. What she is feeling is private, and no visualised mediation of it is going to come close to communicating the reality of her experience.
But more than that, that footage tricks us, as humans, into feeling we are sharing something with that woman. It short-circuits our natural ability to imagine how she feels. We don’t have to exercise that integral part of real compassion – imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes – because we’re seeing the PICTURES LIVE AS IT OCCURS.
Our ability to be empathetic and compassionate is directly linked to our ability to imagine not just image, or sound, or taste or touch, but deeply felt emotion. I think – I fear – that this sort of exploitative coverage actually stunts those imagination muscles. I think it’s damaging us.
And you’re probably rolling your eyes and thinking: what the hell has this to do with erotic fiction? Well, it’s actually pretty simple. I believe that words alone force us to use our imagination muscle more. And I think that not writing EVERYTHING is also important. We are feeling, empathetic beings. Writers need to keep that in mind when they write and not over-write. To take a chance and over-estimate your reader’s ability to get it.
Yup. That’s my thought for the day. Now I’m going to take away my little imagination and imagine what that first night in bed with a wife you haven’t seen in 2 months feels like.
spot on
I agree with the overall sentiment but approach it from a slightly different analysis.
Car crash culture, (and I tip my hat at Ballard’s “Crash” too) -the only emotions we seem able to feel are vicarious ones since inured to feeling as we are, we no longer possess the ability, as well as you say the imaginative space to feel directly for ourselves. We have to have emotion framed, packaged and presented for us to facilitate an emotional response in ourselves. Little short of tick boxing.
The dynamic is little different to the talent/reality shows – the emotional allegiance and loathing we are supposed to attach to the various contestants. Panto boo-hiss/cheering emotions. These shows work not because of the talents being displayed, but because of the ‘tragic’/ ‘miserable’ back stories the competitors have. A simplistic message of triumph over adversity, the American Dream of you too can be famous is what is being peddled.
And why does this formula work? Because with the power of the phone vote, for an hour a week at least, the viewing public can feel like the Classical Greek Gods legislating over the fates of mere mortals. Emotion is only the patina, what lies underneath is the lust for power. To regain a smidgeon of control over life that they don’t really possess for themselves so estranged are they within our society.
Very few people recognize how the law of unintended consequences works across the course of human history and most importantly, how we are NOT immune. Compare today with the age following Gutenberg’s printing press and the introduction of moveable type to Europeans in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Think about all of the changes that occurred due to the spread of information: The Christian Reformation, Scientific Revolution…
Now consider this: http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainBriefings_MirrorNeurons
Discovered in the early 1990s, Mirror Neurons are revolutionizing the way Neuroscientists understand human neurophysiology and brain function. This could do for Neuropsychology what DNA did for Biology. It also explains why you pose a valid argument towards how this dynamic in media technology today may be damaging us. Most certainly, we spend more time in front of a screen than in a social setting or among a group of people. We experience human emotion more frequently via television, photographs, social networks, mobile devices and the internet as opposed to being physically present.
Mirror Neurons are “…a special class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else make the same movement… Now, however, many have come to believe that we understand others not by thinking, but by feeling. For mirror neurons appear to let us “simulate†not just other people’s actions, but the intentions and emotions behind those actions.”
As a student of theatrical theory and practice throughout history, I have been concerned with the shift from collective experience to a more isolated, much less kinesthetic way of experiencing life. Muscles atrophy. And what if the brain does something similar? Then, yes, we are becoming desensitized. Imaginations grow dull. Attention spans shorten.
What does this have to do with Erotic Fiction? We are entering an age of either Premature Ejaculation or Viagra-Cialis: Tantric sex will become practiced less and less. And no one wants to see our orgasms getting shorter and much less intense, do we?
Just think about it. Great post RG.
RG’s add: Kimberly’s post is here http://gidgetwidget.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/mining-emotions/
RG,
I as well have been observing the scene live from Chili with interest & curiosity, struck by the sanitized scene. Orange jumpsuits, white hard hats, loyal wives waiting patiently, flag waving, dropping to the knees in prayer. Myself, I’m curious as to what the real scene is, before the world turned its head.
Thank you,
-TFP
Funny, I wrote about the miners too. You always say it better but I found it very moving.
And it sparked my imagination. What must they and their families have felt during all this time? What must they feel today? I didn’t watch that much of it. I’m not a TV person really, but somehow I had to see the operation and the equipments for myself.
RG’s adds: Sin’s post is here: http://findingmysubmission.blogspot.com/
My answer is this.. do you think she cares? Let’s put aside (for a moment) the analysis on whether or not the world should practice our empathy skills (and a million others) more often. Let’s look at the woman herself, whose grief stricken face inspired your conflict. Do you think she is bothered by the cameras on her?
This is a journey she couldn’t have made alone. Her husband wasn’t dug out by her clawing fingers, or her wishes – but a larger effort that involved money, skills and equipment she most certainly didn’t have. Now, I don’t mean to sound callous and make it as if her tears are some sort of payment or that privacy wouldn’t have been nice for her, but I honestly think she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care because her husband she’s missed is coming out of the hell he’s been in. She doesn’t care because she is onto a million other worries about his health and well-being.
If seeing her face (and emotion) destroys someone’s ability to feel or imagine, on their own, just how conflicted and excited and anxious she is, then they aren’t going to be moved by words either. It’s painful emotion, but it isn’t unattainable still, for most of us.
No, I don’t think she cares. But that wasn’t really my point. And you could be right that all this media attention to personal reaction is not doing us any harm at all. My gut says it does, but I have no empirical proof of it.
I know exactly where you’re coming from on this. At one stage a camera was ‘peering’ into the little annexe where the allegedly private reunions were to be held. A couple were standing inside in a tight embrace for the first time in two months. Like you, my instant reaction was ‘For fuck’s sake – this isn’t a peep-show and let’s give these people some privacy and dignity ….’ Even the BBC commentator sounded slightly embarrassed….
I have not been able to watch this event, for I was horrified that we are still sending people into the earth yet we have no way to quickly extract them. We spend a lot of money on tools and machines to get materials but humans seem to not be as treasured as the materials. That was where my thoughts were. I couldn’t fathom the fear of the men or the terror off their families.
I do not think that we can ever have privacy, when we need others to help us solve a problem. Often, privacy means solitary. I turned my face away but kept my ears open, for looking caused me grief. Maybe others cannot have empathy, if they cannot see and vicariously tune into every twitch, tear and shudder. Thus, they ned to see her heart stuck in her throat, pulsing in agony.
My grief and joy are not hers and no, I do not have any attachment to those men who were rescued. But my humanity does sincerely hope they will be well and that we have many less incidences such as these in the future.
My mirror neurons have nothing more to offer at this time.
i used to be one of those people who would be glued to the tv…and then a year ago, the house that is adjacent to mine had a horrific house fire. I woke at 1130 hearing the screams as the 13 year old daughter hung out her bedroom window, the voices of the people helping to catch her, the crackle of the flames. I rushed outside, worried as much for my kids, fast asleep in their beds, in case the fire spread.
And the people kept coming and coming and coming. Drinking coffee. walking into yards. Gawking at one of the most severe fires in our community in years.
a 16 year old boy, the oldest of the three kids, died in that fire, in his third floor bedroom. The 12 year old was safely pulled from her front bedroom by firefighters. Their mom worked 6 houses away at the corner convenience store and was minutes away from ending her shift for the night.
and i kept crying and saying ‘fuckers, you don’t *get* it’ …it was a circus to them. A curiosity.
I’ve never felt the same way about gawking ever again. So yes, i have watched a bit…but i agree, RG that it only takes away from us, to witness the survivors, their families as they struggle to take back their loved ones, as they struggle back to a life that can never be the same. i wish them well as they begin to re-enter the lives they left behind.
nilla
Interesting that you should bring up the witnessing of non-mediated tragedies. I had a discussion last night with one of my colleagues who mentioned something interesting. At least, he said, when people are present and onlookers at a event like that, they have to take responsibility for their actual presence. But when we watch it on TV, it’s like being peeping toms into disaster. We get all the pleasure of feeling like we are caring and compassionate, without any real cost to us.
On the other hand, I guess it would be fair to say that there can be some stress involved in this for people who actually get very frustrated by watching a tragedy unfold, and being too far away or not having the skills to offer any real help.
That’s the illness of time, just saying. There’s no place for the intimacy, the person and its limits became an illusion, we live in a big, irritating reality show.
Greetings y eso y aquello.
Thank you for your thoughts on this, Remittance Girl. Between yourself and GidgetWidget I have had refreshingly thought-provoking morning.
I agree with you completely on this. I was sickened when i heard that they delayed the rescue to coincide with the 7 O’clock new in Chile, hadn’t those miners waited long enough?
News can often seem heartless coverage of someones woe. But if this is the case then it’s the product our societies lack of moral fibre.
Keep making my imagination muscle work :). It needs the exercise badly.