[-empyre-] II (

[Jonathan Marshall]

Alan

>>> 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.

You are absolutely right that the convincing is complex, although i would still say one reason they are being convinced that it is different is because it is 'only an image', it is not real.

however, we also do know that people can watch things being killed repeatedly as a form of entertainment 'off-screen', so its not just the 'screen' that does this.

A lot depends upon how the situation is framed.  If its framed as virtual or just an image, or just a film, or just a simulation, then its easier for  people to assert that its not really real and has no pull, or that we as 'audience' have no responsibility. 

thats why i keep pulling back to saying that what people call virtual is real, is full of humanity (to use an old fashioned phrase), it resonates with suffering.

>> 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.

then lets have more!

>> 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.

Depends on the moral theory employed, but it is open to research.

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

thats why i said the second step is difficult, but that is why there might need to be guidposts
but without the first step you might not get the second.

jon

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