Blog Post #1

BLOG POST 1:

This is the first part of my blog portfolio for the Better Lives unit, in which I will be discussing how one particular lecture from the beginning of the term has shaped my thinking. Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility: the building blocks on which the lectures we listened to are based, made for a very informative and substantial discourse which provided me with a lot to consider. The one that most struck a chord with me and made me realise certain things that I hadn’t thought about before was Lorraine Gammon’s lecture on empathy. As she said, most art projects come from a place of empathy because art is a way to try and make someone understand the way you feel. Art is a natural human way of communication that bypasses the inconsistencies of language, making it accessible to everyone capable of empathy. I believe that the vast majority, if not all, human beings are capable of empathy, but in this day an age it’s not as big a part of society as it should be, considering how big a part it plays in our psyche. This made me think about a study that I found out about a while ago, which led me to a fairly wide-spread article from 2011 on the possibility that rats were presenting empathetic behaviours, by freeing fellow cage mates that were restrained in plexiglass tubes.

 Even just considering the possibility of some sort of biological reasoning for the development of empathy, why is it that it that we have somehow lost our way and in a lot of ways we repress it? As Lorraine explains in the lecture, the main cause is most likely the cycle of consumerism and capitalism that our society finds itself stuck in. I believe that ultimately this development comes from place of good that has become misguided, as we lost track of the initial goal of improving our quality of life. I also believe there’s a possibility that our current society’s lack of empathy may stem from trying to avoid being disappointed or hurt. Offering an empathetic response provides a connection which leaves us open to either good or bad responses, this is why a lot of people, who consider themselves “good”, will still ignore someone on the street asking for money; because of how our brains have been conditioned towards greed, we ignore the natural empathetic reaction, which would be to help them by sharing our money. Empathy can be good for us, as it can help us make connections with others, but it also brings us pain when we think that we can’t possibly share all of our money with people who need it because we do actually need at least some of it to. That being said, when circling back to the Better Lives themes, it’s easy to notice how our behaviour doesn’t reflect them, which I think is the reason for this whole exercise.