As an only-occasional contributor to this list and participant in this
community, I send this email with my knees knocking (maybe not literally,
but not kidding either...)
I found myself troubled by the passage in Diane's note ("Re: outside
what?") where she appears to assert that attempts to express and feel
empathy are empty. (And yes, I am "selecting" this out of a much larger
text she has written. But I cannot do otherwise, nor can any of us.)
Here's the passage:
>your gestures towards empathy are not unappreciated, the "if i were...'
>but in theory,
>you are not anyone else than who you are, and if you are not willing to
>reflect on that,
>then everything else is gratuitous, isn't it?
>if i were i white guy with tenure, i'd be a really cool person.
>if i were black i'd totally understand ghetto culture.
>if i were hispanic, i'd totally support Taco Bell... and J-Lo, and ...
>whatever.
>
>i CAN'T know what it's like to be anyone other than who i am.
>if "IFs" and "BUTs" were candies and nuts, we ALL would fill our pockets.
I'm sorry, but this just seems too glib and dismissive to me. In my view,
so much important learning comes from our more-or-less successful attempts
to "put ourselves in the position of the other" that I cannot accept,
politically, pedagogically, or epistemologically, this counsel of despair.
Indeed, if we borrow a leaf from Y. Sayeki's "anthropomorphic
epistemology", one can even come to a better understanding of the world by
"putting oneself in the position" of, say, a particle moving at close to
the speed of light!
- Jerry Balzano
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 11 2002 - 09:22:34 PST