Empathy. I think that it is empathy. Those tiny points at which, while... journeying through some piece of art, be it a book, or a play, or an exhibit, the onlooker finds course to remark with a marked, "ahh!" "Ah, yes," "ah-hah," "I know this moment!" "This moment is present in my life (or, "my past," or, "my heart")." And, then, the art stops being something foreign preaching to them, the art is no longer a brimstone Spanish missionary shouting at the Aztecs. The art becomes something alive. The art can become a revelation... an evolution?
"This is where I am (she must know it) and that which follows? Maybe that is something, also." And a hundred little worlds move.
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I think apathy, or the antithesis of empathy, has become epidemic in our society. Is it because so many have lost their ability to relate to the plight of others? Are we taught to be complacent through mind-numbing television programs? Do we come to distrust humanity because we feel alienated? Arg. Frustration ensues…
-Jenny
A psychology teacher of mine related an experiment that took place back, I believe, in the seventies. He went around to different institutions and gathered together a group of about twenty men and women who all thought that they were Jesus Christ. He then sat them all down in one room, around a table, as if it were a meeting. He filmed what transpired through a one-way mirror.
The twenty Jesus Christs did not each claim to be the one true Saviour. There was no violence and there was minimal argument, much to the psychologist's dismay (as this was his hypothesis). Twenty Jesus Christs sat around a table and conducted a very thorough, respectful, and peaceful meeting regarding how to solve humanity's problems.
The experiment, from the point of view of the psychologist, was an abyssmal failure.
It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever taken out of a class.
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