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<p>Nick -</p>
<p>Shaping is done by geometric and physical constraints in my
lexicon. I use Informed to be more Inform-ational than physical
and to suggest that the "informing element/domain" actually
provides some of the "material" or "substance" or "content" than
the "shaping domain" would. Glen doesn't like us flapping on
about metaphors expansively and arbitrarily, but to imply that an
emotional reaction has a "shape" suggests more physicality and
geometry than I intend. The "emotional reaction" in discussion
may well have a deep neurological pattern to it, but *that*
physical/geometric/topological shape is likely very difficult to
map onto what I mean when I think "emotional reaction". To be
self-referential, "what is the shape of your emotional reaction"
to my (and others?!) use of the term "informed" do you think?
*I* think your emotional reaction is likely *informed* by previous
experiences you have had with "hoity toity" (Glen's term of art
for much of our prattling/bloviating here, methinks) words being
used where something simple and utilitarian could be used mo'
better. Maybe other uses of "informed" have been more egregious
(or at least less intentional) than my own here, leaving you with
a "hair trigger" on the topic.<br>
</p>
<p>I'm probably just picking fights here because I wouldn't get past
the first perimeter of the White House... prodding at others'
"triggers" (I have a particular aversion to that word for my own
reasons which are probably *shaped* (or informed?) by the
metaphorical domain implied of perhaps firearms, explosive devices
or other kinetic weapons). One of my biggest triggers perhaps is
the use of the term "trigger" in an emotional context. It makes
me want to "go off" on the person messing with my "trigger". I
suppose one could say it is a "hair trigger"? So, in the future,
I will *shape* my sentences to avoid using the term *inform*
outside of the literal usage of one individual transmitting
*information* to another! <br>
</p>
<p>This is all in fun of course... I'm really not triggered here
nor trying to trigger anyone else beyond the superficial.
Displacing hand-wringing with vapid banter perhaps.<br>
</p>
<p>Carry on,</p>
<p> - Stee<br>
</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">“shaped”, steve. It was shaped. You know
what “shaped” means. Nobody knows what “informed” means, in
that usage. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And if you ever use “incredibly” to mean
“very” or “incredible” to mean good, I will come after you
with pitchforks. Somebody said on a podcast that the NYTimes
had some incredible reporters. In an age in which credibility
is the central issue of our time, we do not want to fudge its
meaning. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">n<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Clark University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span style="color:#0563C1">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span style="color:#0563C1">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1
1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Steve
Smith<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, October 7, 2020 10:34 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Marcus Daniels wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<p class="MsoNormal">Once one practices modulating a class of
these feelings it changes how or even if one experiences
them. Having empathy can just be another form of being
reactive which is not a good way for adults to be IMO. It
is equally reactive to be enraged every time Trump or
Trumpers are on TV. They dehumanized themselves.<o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I believe that suppressing one's
pity/sympathy/empathy/compassion entirely is the "reactive"
mode... I suspect our friend Donald started down that path
at a very young age and has only the barest echoes or ghosts
of those feelings remaining. I knew too many "western men"
as a child who seemed to have done the same with their
relationship to nature and animals... being brutal with
predators/varmints leading to a certain brutality to prey
(game animals) to their own working stock (cattle, sheep,
rabbits, horses, dogs) and then ultimately their families
(wives, children) and could-have-been friends. They were not
devoid of this, but there was something about the lifestyle
and circumstance (and social context) that seemed to strongly
encourage, if not require, that suppression of empathy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>As a teen I was faced with a looming conscription to go to
Vietnam and "kill some gooks" (sorry for the patently non-PC
framing, but it captures at least half of the image of the
time) as well as being faced with letting that happen and
returning to the other half of the country shouting "baby
killer" in my face. I *knew* that these were not my only two
choices, but it forced (opportuned?) me to consider what I had
to lose if I let my own country (and most of it's citizens)
inject me (like a pinball) into that pinball game of "no good
choices". What I had to lose was my empathy, as underformed
and possibly even maladapted as it was at 14 or 16 or 18 years
old. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I am not willing to treat empathy as nothing more than an
"emotional reaction", though I acknowledge that it is informed
(sorry Nick, I can't help using that idiom) by a deep
emotional experience. Perhaps Empathy is to Pity as Justice
is to Revenge... most of the Right might think this is
splitting hairs, and perhaps they have swayed the Left into
the same perspective? Everyone's loss.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>- Steve<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<div>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1
1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam <a
href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a>
<b>On Behalf Of </b><a
href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, October 7, 2020 9:07 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group' <a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"><friam@redfish.com></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Glen, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">I don't think of empathy as something
that you gin up; it either happens to you, or it doesn't.
And then you decide what you want to do with your empathy.
As a child, perhaps,, did you ever read any of Ernest
Thompson Seton's (no relative) <b><i>Lives of the Hunted</i></b>?
The wolf, terror of the Corrumpaw (?), wily killer of sheep,
evader of traps, lies before you in a cage, wounded and
helpless. You feel empathy. And so you kill it. Anybody
who tells you that you <i>should</i> feel empathy lacks
empathy for your lack of empathy. I WILL feel empathy for
Trump when he's tried. I dread those trials. In fact,
even watching him twist and lie and twist and lie, watching
him contort, makes me queasy inside, like watching a man
tortured. But empathy, like rage, is just another emotion,
and needs, like all emotions, to be tempered with reason. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Nick<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Clark University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><a
href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>>
On Behalf Of u?l? ???<br>
Sent: Wednesday, October 7, 2020 6:54 AM<br>
To: FriAM <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">A collection of people, who shall
remain nameless, recently tried to shame me for objecting to
their waste of empathy for poor lil ol Trump, in light of
his infection. One argument went something like "His father
was horrible." One primary argument went something like
"empathy begets empathy". Empathy is not zero-sum. Etc.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">I started my objection to all this
Trump-as-a-victim talk by listing several aspects of his
CHARMED LIFE, like the fact that he's lucky enough to have
lived to a ripe old age (when so many of us die young), he
was born wealthy (when so many of us live our entire lives
dirt poor), his stupid TV show was wildly successful (when
so many of us are serial failures), his weaponized
litigousness has benefited him throughout his life (when so
many of us can't even afford a lawyer). Etc. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">All that *privilege* has been bestowed
upon him. And it seems, to me, he's squandered it all. He
reminds me of those pitiful pictures of Saddam Hussein in
court and then prison and then dead. Oh boo-hoo, poor little
dictator being mistreated. Such sentiments are not merely
weird to me. If game theory and the success of simplistic
tit-for-tat has taught us anything, it is that the
algorithmic *depth* required to beat straightforward
(poetic) "justice" is academically interesting, but
pragmatically degenerate.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">So, no. I will not waste any of my
finite lifetime feeling sorry for poor lil ol Trump, our
Privilege Squanderer in Chief. If that magically limits my
ability to empathize in some other context, so be it. If it
implies that when I die pathetically, under some bridge,
eating partial hamburgers from the Wendy's dumpster, my
colleagues *rightly* avoid wasting their finite lifetimes
feeling sorry for me, then I'm ready for that day. Like it
or not, tu quoque is a fallacy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">--<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">↙↙↙ uǝlƃ<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"> <o:p></o:p></p>
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