Interesting Links for 15-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Behold, the first photos taken from the moon in over 40 years!
  (tags: moon china photos )
• Disney's Frozen Is Headed for Broadway
  (tags: musicals disney )
• Sales of electric cars near double in 2013. (To 1% of all UK cars, but it's a start...)
  (tags: cars electricity )
• Man Poses As Woman On Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours
  (tags: dating

Comments

[erindubitably]

Humans are utterly lousy at really understanding what experiences are like for other people, even when they are repeatedly told.

I kind of have to take exception at this - I think it's a lot easier for some groups to understand or at least sympathise with other groups' experiences, because they've experienced similar things themselves. I haven't experienced racism, but I damn well believe when other people describe situations in which they have, because I've faced discrimination of other flavours before and I know what people are capable of. I don't need to dress up in blackface and experience it myself to agree that it's a problem and needs to be dealt with.

I mean, you were able to see the problem with the wheelchair accommodation, presumably without having to go through the exercise yourself. It's not that hard to understand what other people go through if you put a modicum of time and effort into understanding, but you have to try. It doesn't happen without effort*.

*the effort of thinking about it, not going through the whole 'pretend I'm X and see how I'm treated' like the article says.

[andrewducker]

"I think it's a lot easier for some groups to understand or at least sympathise with other groups' experiences, because they've experienced similar things themselves."

Absolutely. But if you've never experienced that kind of thing (and an awful lot of people haven't, because they're in the majority) then it just never occurs to you. Which can make explaining things to them difficult, because they just don't comprehend that people would behave that way.

Edit: Obviously by "majority" I don't mean overall - if you're white and male then you're in one actual majority, and one about-parity. But you're not "in a minority" and you're in a massive group that frequently comes across as being "Everyone. Or at least everyone who matters."

[erindubitably]

I guess where I find that idea objectionable is when it comes to actually doing stuff about it - too often you hear about these types of stories where people go "wow, I didn't realise it was so bad, I'll definitely be changing my behaviour/trying harder/working to fight the problem now".

I don't want everybody to have to experience all the stuff other people go through in order to try and change it for the better, because a) that would take too long and b) I don't want _anybody_ to have to go through that stuff.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure what you mean by "objectionable" here. Either people act in this way/change their beliefs in this way, or they don't. (Obviously there'll be a spectrum of behaviours, but I'm talking about the majority case.) Do you mean that you like/don't like the fact that they do? Or something else?

I completely agree that I don't want everyone to have to experience stuff before they want to improve it. And I don't think they _have_ to. I think that education can do a lot of good (I wouldn't bother sharing a lot of the stuff I do if I didn't think it might help).

I know that, in the past, documentaries and dramas have had a massive effect on people's view of a situation - things like Cathy Come Home - and I'd have thought that we could do with more of that.

If we had more shows about how awful life for poor people is, rather than things like Benefits Street, then we'd probably be doing a good job of getting things over and triggering that sense of empathy in people.

The tricky bit, in my opinion, is portraying it in a way that gets it over to the mass market, without them feeling attacked by it, because that turns people off. That's a really tricky thing to do, and I wish there were (more) people in the mass media who were working on it.

[erindubitably]

I don't know, I think maybe I have extrapolated too much from the original example; I disliked the insinuation that it's human nature not to empathise with other people unless you're put in the exact same position as them. I agree that education is vital, but in the example above there are plenty of education resources/news articles/etc about the sort of crap women get online and the frustration many people have expressed that this guy couldn't believe it until he went through it himself is justified, I think.

Anyway, I think maybe I've gotten off the point and am arguing at cross-purposes now. I agree that the media seems to gleefully enjoy pitting us against each other more than helping us understand each other, and I'd like to see that stop.

[andrewducker]

I agree that there's a lot of resources about it. But people don't look at those unless they believe there's a reason to. It's a vicious cycle, whereby people don't believe there's a problem because they've never seen a problem, and they won't go looking for proof of a problem because they've never a reason to believe it exists.

You see similar things throughout history too - including things like factionalism in groups during the 60s (because the anti-racism groups couldn't empathise with the feminist groups, and the class-warfare groups couldn't empathise with either of them).

I think one of the great things that's happened over the last few years is the resurge of feminism that's happened because of the internet. It's been a fairly classic case of this - where society is held up in a great big cycle of false beliefs about minorities, and because there wasn't an easy way for individuals/small groups to connect and mobilise they weren't being successful at breaking that cycle - but connecting them over things like Twitter, and a variety of websites, we've ended up with people who are slowly breaking through that.

It's hard though. And almost certainly going to take a generation or three.