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Real0ne -> RE: Freedom From Atheism! (3/19/2016 5:41:45 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
quote:
I;d be interested in hearing what you mean by 'social sense' since there are many ways to interpret that? Family? The World?
It's all very vague and loose stuff for me, R0. Things I've picked up from natural history, psychology ... I'm nobody's idea of an expert in any of this.
Anyway, the idea runs like this: other people, even things, around oneself, begin to feel as though they're part of one's own body. Thus, for instance, the driver of a car will *wince* if he's scraped the side of it on a bollard - just like he'd scraped his own body. The same's true with other people - but only so long as you feel that the 'other people' concerned are in some way 'part of you'. Your wife - your children - easy to grasp: You see your partner or your kid cut his arm, you *wince* - just as though it's your own arm. I'm wondering if that same sense runs true, albeit to a weaker degree, to humanity as a whole.
i've heard that the most basic moral maxim of all is 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' - and that there's some equivalent to this in all the major religions. Assume that's the case. But if I'm right about that sense of 'that other person's body is part of mine' ... then you'd never even need the religious maxim. By sheer instinct, you'd assume that you'd not do to someone what would harm yourself - because that other person *is a part of yourself*.
Re all that - a practical example. As a kid of 13 or so, I got into a fight with another kid. I punched his nose and it bled profusely. The kid burst into tears. Me, I knew what it was like to be hit in the nose and to burst into tears. His nose 'was my nose'; his tears 'were my tears'. To this day I still wince at the memory of that.
In short, you can't go around hurting your own body.
Me - my brothers and sisters, if they're hurt, I'll wince with their hurt - they're 'part of me'. Not so much as my mother would, no doubt - but it's there. Same with close friends. I'll wince also when I watch a film and see a likeable character hurt. But some people - the baddies in films - if they get hurt, I don't care. They are not part of me. They're 'other'.
I remember reading once about Mother Theresa of Calcutta - that she couldn't read of any hurt to anyone at all, anywhere, without wincing. If that's true - then it's this, whatever it is, that I guess would be humanity's salvation. Empathy - you feel what others feel, because *all* others are a part of you. The psychopath has none of that; the saint has it to the nth degree.
Anyway, that's the hypothesis. As I said: I don't fecken know. Just a collection of notions.
Well you have identified a sort of empathic self induced connection to inanimate objects sounds like to me. Say sking for instance the skis definitiony become part of or an extension of your body, if they dont you roll down the hill. Empathy is actully a projection usually resulting from somethingn that you are sensitive to in how you see yourself and relate to the world around you rather than some power causing you to feel some way.
In any event you govern yourself according to your own moral base and that is your religion, whatever the elements are that make up your moral compass.
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