[FRIAM] Trump as a victim
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Wed Dec 2 23:03:01 EST 2020
Nick -
> Hi Steve, I have been pretty sick all day, sleep about tUUentytuuof
> the last tUUenty four hours. Many of my symptoms are covidish, but I
> have been as isolated as anybody on the planet, so I don’t knoUU UUtf
> is going on. So, Just to say, I uuont be answering your splendid
> message any time soon.
>
Wow dewd! I hope you are COVID (and influenza/etc.) free...
This is a stale posting so there is no time-critical thing... just don't
check out on us while we hold our breath waiting for your response!
I hope your recover is shaped and informed by our collective
thoughts/prayers/karmic/morphic-resonance
- STeve
>
>
> No
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 7, 2020 2:45 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim
>
>
>
> Nick -
>
> 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.
>
> 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!
>
> 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.
>
> Carry on,
>
> - Stee
>
> “shaped”, steve. It was shaped. You know what “shaped” means.
> Nobody knows what “informed” means, in that usage.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 7, 2020 10:34 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim
>
>
>
>
>
> Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of
> *thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 7, 2020 9:07 AM
> *To:* 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> <friam at redfish.com> <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim
>
>
>
> Glen,
>
>
>
> 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)
> */Lives of the Hunted/*? 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 /should/ 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.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Wednesday, October 7, 2020 6:54 AM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> --
>
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
>
>
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