Spinoza, Edbauer reports, said "the same man can be affected by one and the same object in different ways at different times" (10). When I read this, I'm tempted to mutter "story of my life" and move on. My most recent example: I'm not doing particularly well in a class that I'm not particularly interested in (it's a science class, but I'm a Rhetoric major for good reason). When I realized this past week that the grade I wanted is totally out of reach, I was simultaneously depressed (there goes my GPA) and relieved (now I can stop working so hard at it and try something else). I don't know which feeling I'll land on by the end of the semester.
But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. Edbauer is writing about a real person, a real president, which is all well and good. But I'm going to retreat to the safer world of TV politics: The West Wing.
In the opening episodes of the third season (2001), as President Bartlet is about to announce his reelection campaign, the staff hears that the FDA is about to approve the morning-after pill. This sends them into a dither: on the one hand, they've been wanting this announcement. On the other hand, this gives fodder to their political adversaries: The Bartlet adminstration doesn't share their values. The dual announcements give rise to the same level of bifurcation within the staff as the joy/sadness split can in the same person. Or, as Spinoza also said, "Different men can be affected in different ways by the one and the same object" (9-10). Just as Bush's dialect difficulties caused a different reactions in different people, so would this politically charged announcement.
In both cases, it seems the guy in charge can't win. So, would it be best to try to dampen the reaction as best as possible? (In the TWW episode, the staff suggests postponing the event.) Or just go for it and hope for the best, as both Bush and Bartlet did? Which would be more likely to convince 50% of the electorate?
After the events of Sunday, I was reading through my Facebook and Twitter feeds, gauging the different reactions to the news that Osama bin Laden is now dead.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that I had mixed emotions about the news. On the one hand, a serious terrorist mastermind is no longer a threat to the world. On the other hand, if bin Laden is not pulling the strings (which he actually hasn't been for the past some odd years), that only means that someone else is.
Another way of looking at it. One of my friends re-tweeted a phrase that makes me even more torn about the situation: He was a demagogue and mass-murderer. But rejoicing in or celebrating another person's violent death is fucked. Let's quietly move on. (Sorry for the language. I literally copy and pasted this line!)
It's all about the framing. I feel guilty for celebrating the death of a human being, a creature that God put on this earth. But feeling sorry for a criminal and murderer being shot and killed is also really hard for me to do.
I'm still torn.
On Monday morning, I blogged (on my real blog) about how unsettled I was with people's reactions to someone dying. Your friend is correct, I think.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, that's something we've talked about this semester (this is a pathos post, not a cyberculture post, but you started something interesting): you can't help the reaction. Your first emotion is beyond your control. But I believe that you can control what you do next, whether tweeting or setting off fireworks or whatever. It's like what Steven Covey made so much money writing about in Seven Habits: humans have the ability to be proactive, not just reactive.
Following these comments - This really goes back to Aristotle I think. After all, when we get revenge it is to satisfy a feeling. To quote Aristotle, "Revenge, too, is pleasant (1370b 29)." It is a victory over someone who wronged "us", so really, I'd say that it is simply part of the human condition to feel pleasure over the act of vengeance towards someone who has both done injustice to us and escaped revenge thus far (as Aristotle says, "angry people suffer extreme pain when they fail to get their revenge (1370b 30)") so the years of expectation, hope and disappointment compounded over almost a decade into a massive tidal wave of emotion that simply swept through people. Going to Brennan, your first judgment is based on the affect that assails you, discernment comes after as your conscious mind mediates the affects. In the case of the death of Bin Laden, the initial rush of affect was simply so powerful that in many people it simply crushes out and washes away any subsequent feelings such as regret towards the death of a human being. Naturally, the actions of the man don't make that any easier as well.
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