«A poesia, entre os árabes cultos foi julgada como um
poder de comunicação capaz de produzir o encantamento do ouvinte e uma estética
de compreensão ela exigia um estado de inteligência que prescinde do
pensamento»
Agustina Bessa-Luís
quinta-feira, 13 de outubro de 2011
quinta-feira, 6 de outubro de 2011
terça-feira, 4 de outubro de 2011
O que dizem as crianças sobre Sexo e Universo
- Podes! Ainda bem...
- O que representa para ti o Sexo? Faço esta pergunta porque me parece ser um tema recorrente no que escreves, sentes, comunicas. De forma mais, ou menos, expressa.
- Significa Liberdade. Um valor moral. O mais alto e o mais difícil de se viver segundo as suas exigências. Há outras coisas que também são manifestações de Liberdade. Não é só o sexo, obviamente.
- E o Sexo é também uma enorme força espiritual e, em última instância, uma forma de elevação. Mas como todos os bichinhos também não me livro dele enquanto necessidade básica, como comer, dormir, beber, defecar. No entanto, a esse modo primário de o viver recorro só em situações limite, de necessidade extrema. Acho que depois desta conversa talvez o Universo nos considere aptos a nos encontrarmos mais vezes.
- É mesmo uma questão de agenda, sabes.
- Lá estás tu!
- Sou uma mulher de convicções...
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Entre o céu e o mar
- Pareces uma adolescente a descobrir a vida. Deves fazer uma boa equipa com a tua filha.
- Sim, gosto de olhar o mundo com olhos frescos. Aceito essas palavras como um duplo elogio.
- Gosto dessas costas douradas salpicadas de estrelas negras e fico com vontade de beijar esse céu dourado.
- Entre estrelas e buracos negros é preciso ser astronauta para me viajar.
- Sim, gosto de olhar o mundo com olhos frescos. Aceito essas palavras como um duplo elogio.
- Gosto dessas costas douradas salpicadas de estrelas negras e fico com vontade de beijar esse céu dourado.
- Entre estrelas e buracos negros é preciso ser astronauta para me viajar.
- E ter a tua carta náutica para se perder nesse mar imenso.
sábado, 1 de outubro de 2011
The Limits of Empathy
Op-Ed Columnist
The Limits of Empathy
By DAVID BROOKS
We are surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place.
Peace activists bring enemies together so they can get to know one
another and feel each other’s pain. School leaders try to attract a
diverse set of students so each can understand what it’s like to walk in
the others’ shoes. Religious and community groups try to cultivate
empathy.
There’s a lot of truth to all this. We do have mirror neurons in our
heads. People who are empathetic are more sensitive to the perspectives
and sufferings of others. They are more likely to make compassionate
moral judgments.
The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.
In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.
Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.
There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.” Other scholars have called empathy a “fragile flower,” easily crushed by self-concern.
Some influences, which we think of as trivial, are much stronger — such as a temporary burst of positive emotion. In one experiment in the 1970s, researchers planted a dime in a phone booth. Eighty-seven percent of the people who found the dime offered to help a person who dropped some papers nearby, compared with only 4 percent who didn’t find a dime. Empathy doesn’t produce anything like this kind of effect.
Moreover, Prinz argues, empathy often leads people astray. It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not longstanding conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.
Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments. In a culture that is inarticulate about moral categories and touchy about giving offense, teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem virtuous without risking controversy or hurting anybody’s feelings.
People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.
Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.
The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.
The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.
In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.
Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.
There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: “These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.” Other scholars have called empathy a “fragile flower,” easily crushed by self-concern.
Some influences, which we think of as trivial, are much stronger — such as a temporary burst of positive emotion. In one experiment in the 1970s, researchers planted a dime in a phone booth. Eighty-seven percent of the people who found the dime offered to help a person who dropped some papers nearby, compared with only 4 percent who didn’t find a dime. Empathy doesn’t produce anything like this kind of effect.
Moreover, Prinz argues, empathy often leads people astray. It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not longstanding conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.
Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments. In a culture that is inarticulate about moral categories and touchy about giving offense, teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem virtuous without risking controversy or hurting anybody’s feelings.
People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.
Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.
The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.
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