[-empyre-] II (

[Jonathan Marshall]

I think this bit of Alan and my conversation is the most relevant for the current topic, 

so i have wrenched it out of context

Alan writes

>I don't think
>Levinasian alterity occurs at least at this technological point - which is
>a fundamental issue - if you're turned down for a date online, it's not
>the same thing as the kind of annihilation that occurs when you're turned
>down face-to-face in highschool (I know!). Sartre's notion of seriality
>has some relevance here.

i think for some people it does - certainly going by what people tell me it can, and by what i feel it can (i'm now older than in high school and have had more experience of rejection so its easier). 

Sure others can do distancing online, but that is why ii has to be explored.

Just as other events online can annihilating as well.

>Where we disagree I think might be the degree of suffering, or accounting
>for the ease with which, for example, animal torture might be acceptable
>online, the ease that slaughter can become a meme, viral, as in the
>beheading videos of a few years back, etc. 

For me, part of this occurs because people convince themselves its only an image, its only virtual

But it does not take much empathy to realise that it is not 'just' anything, 
Doing that takes reinstating online life and images as real really, if different
as having the potential to cause further injury, 
of being ways of inducing and resolving agency

Being dispassionate and watching is, in some way, agreeing with the perpetrators

It is refusing to be open to one's own wounding as well.

>And not only the degree, but
>I'd argue the problem, I've said this here before, is how to make the
>suffering real, how to make the politics _count,_ beyond quickly signing
>petitions - how to make people aware of the emergency, as Ulmer might have
>it (might be misquoting Ulmer here).

signing a petition is a first step :)
and first steps are good. 

Stopping on the first step is maybe not so good 

but then there is the issue of what is the second step?

jon

UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information.
If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or
attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete
this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the
sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney.
Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.

Think. Green. Do.

Please consider the environment before printing this email.