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On Grief, Productivity, and Social Justice


Real Estate RICO

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Real Estate RICO

As most of y'all could guess by my posts, I'm a pretty empathetic person. Maybe too much so, but I'm digressing.

 

After Charlottesville, I've hit the point where I just have nothing. I've been immobilized. Along with mourning and reaching out to people, I've been reflecting on something that I've been thinking about on and off for about a year. It's just that I feel that people just jump to action/conjecture immediately. I'm not knocking that approach because I understand that most of the time, the right time to talk is immediately after tragedy, but I've gotten stuck on "this is the worst day/month/year/stretch of someone's life, and I feel like I have to reach out to them and give them the light/support/love they really need right now. I can pick up the fight later."

 

Unfortunately, I kinda feel like grief and empathy are considered unproductive actions, especially for someone that I never even met. Again, it's this feeling of having to be actively resisting 24/7 that makes me feel this way. But man, it's hitting hard. It's not the first time.

 

I just think.. are we so hell bent on immediate action that we've kinda lost the ability to empathize, grieve, and hurt with people that are directly affected by tragedies like this? Am I just overthinking it?

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Sage Raven Domino

My policy is to have a very limited circle of friends who really matter so that I can offer compassion (= constructive empathy) to each of them at their difficult times. Due to knowing them well, I'll be able to put myself in their shoes more efficiently.

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25 minutes ago, cornerthrees said:

I just think.. are we so hell bent on immediate action that we've kinda lost the ability to empathize, grieve, and hurt with people that are directly affected by tragedies like this?

I believe it's just the pace of everything nowadays.

 

You have something bad happen and the media cover it for a couple of days. By then something else will have happened, or Donald let one rip in public, or there's an election in Southern Dumbfuckistan, or... I think people are just accustomed to move on quickly. "Social media" play their role in this, too. Everyone is just looking for the next big thing it seems, not the current one.

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Lonemathsytoothbrushthief

I'm with @Homer on this one. Also, the very things we're expected to feel grief over, while having no ability to comfort those who are affected because we don't know them, is not natural. We aren't built to be able to cope with that sort of grief with no outlet, and it's better to realise this and, since you can't influence things which you have no connection to, just find other people to talk to about your emotions who understand this feeling.  I used to feel this to extremes, but find that some way of taking part in solidarity movements for communities I'm getting involved with is enough to reduce this feeling. I do have a very strong feeling of obligation towards things like this though.

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Why do you keep bringing up the old left v right crap again and again? sigh

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11 minutes ago, Homer said:

Why do you keep bringing up the old left v right crap again and again? sigh

At least it's less boring than the old radical feminist v oppressed-men crap.  

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Real Estate RICO

For fuck's goddamn sake.

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2 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

Oh yeah, I forgot that America cast aside its two party system and the concept of left and right no longer applied to American politics.  I can't believe I let that one slip by unnoticed.

You also forgot that there are, like, other countries in this world and stuff...

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10 minutes ago, Homer said:

You also forgot that there are, like, other countries in this world and stuff...

What do you mean? The only country is America. Everything else is also America. 

 

Doesn+t+matter+where+something+is+made+e

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3 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

But we were talking about Trump.

That's odd, I thought this was about grief, productivity and social justice.

 

I honestly think that this is one of the major downsides of capitalism. There are lots of places where workforce is treated like robots. It's okay as long as they're productive, but if they aren't or can't be for a while, bam, next. For most people, it actually takes a while to realize that there's more to live for than work. We have a say over here: "I have yet to hear someone say 'I should have spent more time at the office' on their deathbed." We don't really have a grieving culture either.

 

Sadly, it's engraved in our culture. I'm not that much of a difference here. When I had this potentially lethal lung thing, I thought for a second "Who is supposed to cover my shift for tomorrow?" But then you have to make the next step and say "Fuck this." It seems that this is where a lot of people are struggling.

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Calligraphette_Coe
On 8/18/2017 at 6:47 PM, cornerthrees said:

I just think.. are we so hell bent on immediate action that we've kinda lost the ability to empathize, grieve, and hurt with people that are directly affected by tragedies like this? Am I just overthinking it?

I, for one, don't think you are. But I'm cut from the same cloth and would like to think that humanity's salvation-- in fact our very ascendance to the top of the ecological gene pool-- came from cooperation and empathy, not habitual betrayal and a strong right sword arm.

 

But that doesn't mean you sometimes have to compartmentallize righteous anger by doing something altruistic in defiance of the evils of the days in which you live. Consider this statement by the leader of a small religious group who hid Jews from the Vichy French and the Germans in WWII at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon:


 

Quote

 

If our comrades, whose only fault is to be born in another religion, received the order to let themselves be deported, or even examined, they would disobey the order received, and we would try to hide them as best we could. We have Jews. You’re not getting them.

 

 

 

In every age, there have been people who could empathize which kept the worst in human nature from being a cancer that extinguished the best there is in the human heart.

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18 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

But we were talking about Trump.

As an aside note that you picked out specifically to shoehorn Left vs Right discourse into. Definitely not the OP's topic.

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I actually did a bit of research for my university on the topic of grief - especially in the context of losing children because of health issues but it was interesting nevertheless. It really is true that nowadays you don't get much time to grief anything. Your mom died? Great, see you next Monday after the funeral. Your dog died? Why the fuck do even care, it was just a dog. The world is an overall shit place and a tragedy happened? Man, don't be such a pussy. (Not my words, just a disclaimer)

It's sad that we lost so much empathy along the way, especially because we're all so connected nowadays. :/ 

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What happened to the most recent replies?  I click on the page again and they're gone.

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