Saturday, March 25, 2006

Structured space

The repetition of space plays a critical role in the founding of human relationships. Sharing time and experience founds our understanding of co-existence, the familitarity you feel to someone else who feels alive. Entering the same spaces (physically, in education- and always politically) provides a shared vocabulary for understanding other people, and the realization of common bonds you feel with other humans for the sake of their humanity. The tragedy I feel for the world I see in the suburbs is the tragedy of isolation- the closing of common space and the demarcation of experience. Cars and technology by making information and movement more accessible simultaneously make understanding in immobility and regularity more difficult. The other tragedy of loss of commonality is the loss of empathy. There is a reason luxury living requires space- it’s not space for its own sake, but space for the sake of avoiding the face and spaces where suffering occurs. Without regular visibility and shared space of poverty, the people involved become walled out, and in the process, loose their meaning as humans.

This is vague. Look for a replacement.

Also, I realized that I wrote about this already: Cause Celebre

1 Comments:

Blogger searching_monkey said...

This is also the problem with globalization and the growing capitalist impulse to hide the means of production for so many of the products we use on a daily basis. Sweat shops and child labor come to mind first.

Which also reveals the importance of news and media. Mass media is just that. A single channel to get information to a mass of individuals. It's hard to ignore something that has been brought to our attention.

Finally there is a biological basis to empathy that I have been learning about. They are called mirror neurons. Fascinating little things. Apparently when we watch a smiling face, some similar neurons fire as if we smiled ourselves. The same goes for if we see people in pain. There is some sympathic neural activity in ourselves as we "feel" their pain.

Therefore if you isolate yourself in the suburbs and don't watch images of others in pain, you simply don't feel the pain of others.

4:36 PM  

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