Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

It's not mutually exclusive though -- while she advocates all action and no emotion, I don't advocate the reverse. Far from it -- I said I can see the argument, but I completely disagree with divorcing all emotion from it. If you can't feel for tragedy, then how do we as a society avoid inhumane acts? It can't be all intellectual -- the brain can justify all sorts of things if you don't have a heart, an instinct about this sort of thing.

It's not about feeling at the expense of doing, or doing at the expense of feeling. It's about being able to do both.

edit: And frankly, mass societal revulsion at something like this IS constructive because it helps to remind people that this kind of thing is wrong and should be completely discredited at all levels by all people.

 

Now said person posted a status about how we need to be aware that horrible things happen all over the world all the time. **** that ****. We know -- but to jump on your soapbox and say that in the time of a tragedy is not spreading awareness, it's more like going "MEMEMEME LOOK HOW AWARE I AM."

I hate that. Every time there's a shooting or tragedy, people go off about that. It's not that it's an invalid point -- people should care, but it just smacks of inconsiderate ...ugh.

edit: Wow. That was bad. Basically everyone in our group of friends -- several of whom grew up in Boston -- just went off. I did too. It was... yeah. It was bad. I don't want to project my feelings about this tragedy onto another person, because I think it's all too easy to do that (witness all the anger people are expressing alongside the sadness) but damn.

 

I still can't handle Carth's voice coming out of a real person's face. I saw him in Once and I was just... what? No? This cannot happen!

 

I put a couple of things on my Facebook page, one about the runners who finished the marathon and then ran to the hospital to donate blood to the victims. Also about the police officers who were running into the explosions to ensure that everyone else was out of the way.

It was not so much a "look at how aware I am" but more of a "I really, really need to like a few humans today, and here they are."

 

Oh, I don't by any means think that people shouldn't post pertinent status messages. It was just the idea of this person who I'd already been upset with going further to chastise people who were upset about not being upset about the rest of the world -- and it was particularly bad because three people in our immediate group of friends are from Boston and have friends/family there, and it was really insensitive to them. And it's like, I'm not personally affected directly aside from the handful of people I know there (all of whom are fine, thankfully) but I was certainly feelings for my friends because I tend to be empathetic, so I felt that the constant attention-seeking of someone who sort of was flamboyantly unaffected was upsetting and mean. I mean, I don't blame people for being disconnected or unaffected -- I said next to nothing when Sandy Hook happened -- and I do think some people parade pretending to feel affected by it, but something rubs me the wrong way about standing on top of a soapbox declaring that you are unaffected.

What you posted, a_g, is completely different. No way I'd criticize that. I think people need to know that there were people out there who were totally selfless, and it's definitely comforting to know that tragedies can bring out the best in people. I think a person's response to a tragedy says a lot about them as a person.

Don't know why I got super emotionally invested in this, but I did. Weird.

edit: you know, I have a sudden eerie self-consciousness about all this; I guess the most direct way I experienced the tragedy is through these big arguments with my friend, but I almost feel like now I'm trying to get attention of my own by talking about it. It's weirdly self-interested to talk about how I'm upset at someone for being self-interested. So I guess this'll be the last I say anything about it, since the events of today weren't at all about my arguments on facebook but about the real victims out there.

 

Nah, I get it, I'm not big on anybody telling anyone else how they should feel. And there's a "hide from my news feed" option if someone doesn't like someone else's status updates.

 

That is sad. And only 66.

 

I have a confession to make.

Spoiler

I haven't seen a Star Trek movie since 1989.

I did put Deep Space Nine in my Netflix queue though.

 

...so I'm procrastinating on my paper about drones / extrajudicial killing / war crimes by writing about drones / extrajudicial killing / warcrimes in the JCC.

What's wrong with me.

 

lol.


What can I say, I find this stuff fun? The law of war is like my specialty. Unfortunately it doesn't exactly have a wide application, which is probably why nobody's bothered hiring me yet.

 

For some reason I am not overly surprised you dislike Star Trek's soft reboot