[-empyre-] II (

[Alan Sondheim]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Jonathan Marshall wrote:

>> 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
>

Hi Jon - think this is really wrong, the idea that people are "convincing 
themselves" sidesteps the fact that they're not, they're in lived 
situations that are fundamentally different than off-screen.

> 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
>
I think there are other paths, at least my work explores them.
http://eyebeam.org/blogs/alansondheim?page=24 was the beginning of a six 
month residency dealing with this.

> 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.
>
I don't think so, one isn't actively refusing or agreeing.

> signing a petition is a first step :)
> and first steps are good.
>
and usually the last.

- Alan