but with the advent of long-range warfare it's easier to depersonalize.
oh yeah. we read this article in my psychology of war and peace class where this woman (i think she was a journalist) went to stay with some physicists working on warheads and bombs. it was kind of disturbing because she talked about how she couldn't be respected by her basically 100% male colleagues unless she spoke in their specialized lingo but that lingo completely depersonalized everything, from the people being killed to the land being destroyed. And every time she tried to say, "ok so when you blow these people up" they'd look at her like she was this ignorant fool. and it was so weird how you could sterilize something like mass murder.
i don't know if revealing yourself is a perception of crying so much as it is part of crying. just like laughing at something or getting visibly angry about something reveals something about you. and while crying doesn't mean you lose control of your rationality or your ability to work or handle a vehicle (er unless the tears are blinding?) i think it is, for me at least, a loss of control of my emotions.
i agree though that crying shouldn't be so stigmatized since it makes you human and there's nothing wrong with showing people you're capable of a wide range of emotions. though crying in front of people (like patients) could be kind of irresponsible. i think that if i was dying and i saw my own nurse crying at me i might get a little freaked out, more so than i already was about dying. though maybe for some people it's comforting? at least someone cares enough about me to cry over me.
yeah for me it's hard knowing what to do when someone cries. does the person want comfort? or do they want to be alone? everyone's different when it comes to that stuff i think.
When I say that crying is seen to be really revealing, I mean moreso than laughing, snapping at someone, etc. The way I see crying is that it doesn't so much matter what you're showing outside as what you're feeling outside. Cos of course you can be feeling really traumatized but you won't necessarily be making it really visible ie crying. In a situation that could induce a person to cry, shout angrily and throw things, or freeze up, I don't think each physical reaction deserves a weaker/stronger judgement. They're all a reaction to stress, and obvs diff people operate differently. If you're crying as opposed to slamming doors, I don't think it can be inferred that BECAUSE you are crying you have LESS control over yourself. I'm saying there's this value judgement placed on crying in our culture that doesn't get placed on other emotional displays.
I feel awkward too when I'm around someone who's crying, well more especially around someone I don't know very well. But I think it's a product from growing up believing that tears are a really intimate display you're not supposed to show other people, cos you're always supposed to put on a happy face in public. Otherwise people might get uncomfortable or smth and have to deal with your emotions (this is conjecture). Yeah so basically any really passionate display is kinda seen as awkward and something to laugh at. Like that guy who made a video of himself crying about how mistreated Britney Spears is... but that reminds me of the argument that "Women don't know how to get their point across," that is, they speak too "ladylike" or too harsh or soft or whatever, and "that's why" they're not being listened to. But why does it matter so much HOW they're saying it? Isn't it more important or can't you pull yourself together enough to understand WHAT they're saying?
Have you heard of this physicist Feynman? We had to read about him in class and he comes across in his books (the ones that are transcriptions of his interviews/speeches anyway) really charismatic, smart and charming.. hahaha. I'm just laughing cos it makes me sound kinda lovesick. I'm not but he seems like such a cool person, like really into this thing and not minding what other people think about it, but not to the point where he's trying to forcibly push his interest on you and being obnoxious/condescending. He comes across as really honest, but not blunt or harsh.
Anyway he was one of the many people who worked on the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb. He talks about how during while he was working on it, all he (this is paraphrasing/what I rmb) really thought about was ... you know the maths aspect of it, just how interesting the science of it all was. He was also aware of what the technology was ultimately going to be used for, obviously cos they were in the middle of WWII, and the US was worried tt Hitler was also quickly developing his own nuclear bomb. I don't rmb what he thought about the bomb being used on Japan... maybe like amazement that they pulled it off. Figured out the laws and all that. But I do rmb afterwards, maybe like months since the bombs were dropped on Japan, he said he was sitting in a cafe w/ his mom, looking out at New York, and then suddenly seeing in his head an atomic bomb dropping and flattening New York. and then kind of, really feeling what the invention of the a-bomb meant, in terms of developing the ability of killing so many people so easily and at once. But at the same time he didn't exactly wish tt the a-bomb had never been invented. cos he was really thoroughly amazed by science and all that...
ha and I don't really know where I want to go with this thought either. I guess tt we can't spend our time wishing something never happened, we have to deal with it at present.
oh yeah. we read this article in my psychology of war and peace class where this woman (i think she was a journalist) went to stay with some physicists working on warheads and bombs. it was kind of disturbing because she talked about how she couldn't be respected by her basically 100% male colleagues unless she spoke in their specialized lingo but that lingo completely depersonalized everything, from the people being killed to the land being destroyed. And every time she tried to say, "ok so when you blow these people up" they'd look at her like she was this ignorant fool. and it was so weird how you could sterilize something like mass murder.
i don't know if revealing yourself is a perception of crying so much as it is part of crying. just like laughing at something or getting visibly angry about something reveals something about you. and while crying doesn't mean you lose control of your rationality or your ability to work or handle a vehicle (er unless the tears are blinding?) i think it is, for me at least, a loss of control of my emotions.
i agree though that crying shouldn't be so stigmatized since it makes you human and there's nothing wrong with showing people you're capable of a wide range of emotions. though crying in front of people (like patients) could be kind of irresponsible. i think that if i was dying and i saw my own nurse crying at me i might get a little freaked out, more so than i already was about dying. though maybe for some people it's comforting? at least someone cares enough about me to cry over me.
yeah for me it's hard knowing what to do when someone cries. does the person want comfort? or do they want to be alone? everyone's different when it comes to that stuff i think.
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I feel awkward too when I'm around someone who's crying, well more especially around someone I don't know very well. But I think it's a product from growing up believing that tears are a really intimate display you're not supposed to show other people, cos you're always supposed to put on a happy face in public. Otherwise people might get uncomfortable or smth and have to deal with your emotions (this is conjecture). Yeah so basically any really passionate display is kinda seen as awkward and something to laugh at. Like that guy who made a video of himself crying about how mistreated Britney Spears is... but that reminds me of the argument that "Women don't know how to get their point across," that is, they speak too "ladylike" or too harsh or soft or whatever, and "that's why" they're not being listened to. But why does it matter so much HOW they're saying it? Isn't it more important or can't you pull yourself together enough to understand WHAT they're saying?
Have you heard of this physicist Feynman? We had to read about him in class and he comes across in his books (the ones that are transcriptions of his interviews/speeches anyway) really charismatic, smart and charming.. hahaha. I'm just laughing cos it makes me sound kinda lovesick. I'm not but he seems like such a cool person, like really into this thing and not minding what other people think about it, but not to the point where he's trying to forcibly push his interest on you and being obnoxious/condescending. He comes across as really honest, but not blunt or harsh.
Anyway he was one of the many people who worked on the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb. He talks about how during while he was working on it, all he (this is paraphrasing/what I rmb) really thought about was ... you know the maths aspect of it, just how interesting the science of it all was. He was also aware of what the technology was ultimately going to be used for, obviously cos they were in the middle of WWII, and the US was worried tt Hitler was also quickly developing his own nuclear bomb. I don't rmb what he thought about the bomb being used on Japan... maybe like amazement that they pulled it off. Figured out the laws and all that. But I do rmb afterwards, maybe like months since the bombs were dropped on Japan, he said he was sitting in a cafe w/ his mom, looking out at New York, and then suddenly seeing in his head an atomic bomb dropping and flattening New York. and then kind of, really feeling what the invention of the a-bomb meant, in terms of developing the ability of killing so many people so easily and at once. But at the same time he didn't exactly wish tt the a-bomb had never been invented. cos he was really thoroughly amazed by science and all that...
ha and I don't really know where I want to go with this thought either. I guess tt we can't spend our time wishing something never happened, we have to deal with it at present.
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