Proximity generates concern. To whatever you attend you feel close. Distant accidents, wars, and disease get to your frontal lobe, but not always to your amygdala. Tie events to us in time and space, and we suddenly “feel.” In the current age, electronic media play the chief role in shrinking both time and distance, tying us to people beyond our close circle of acquaintances.
First, Time. A contemporary thirty-year-old wasn’t even alive during the near meltdown of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island’s nuclear reactor. Long ago equates to no memory and no feeling unless some education has occurred.
Second, Space. A senior citizen in Tokyo probably paid only passing attention to the Three Mile Island incident. How did the same person respond when a tsunami breached the sea wall of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant?
You can shorten distance and compress time when you want, of course. It doesn’t matter whether or not the object of your attention is distant in either time or space. In varying degrees of interest and concern, you now survey even that with which you had no previous connection. In an age of constant media bombardment, there are very few shelters to keep you from the shrapnel of information. Everywhere comes to you. Everywhere can become proximal.
The process of making something proximate can be either beneficial or detrimental.
Your ability to empathize depends upon your corollary ability to make things “close.” But you can also disdain through the same process. Think of your relationship to the rest of the world as a matter of concentricity and diameters.
As a center, you are surrounded by both proximate and distal physical and social phenomena. The inner circles that orbit your personal concerns are important to you; the distant circles less so. The media can make almost everything anywhere close whether or not you want the knowledge or experience.
Because you have the ability to make the distal proximate, you can “feel” for the victims of war, disease, and natural disaster. You can have both positive and negative feelings about any of these victims. If you perceive the “victim” of war is your enemy, then you probably rejoice in his misfortune. The ability to make something proximate has built in limitations, however. An estimated 100 billion humans have gone before you, and the time that separates you from them is a “distance” that protects you from overwhelming empathy or disdain.
For a moment, to understand my point, try to envision modern Erbil and ancient Arbela, the same city separated by time in the autonomous region of Kurdistan. As I write this, forces of ISIS threaten the modern city. Millennia ago the predecessor city Arbela was threatened by various warring factions, including the Assyrians, Medes, and even the Macedonians. Past and present residents suffered the cruelties of violence. Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king, for example, beheaded people who opposed him. What about your feelings for those who were killed by ruthless leaders and their minions or those who suffered the hardship war and conquest imposed thousands of years ago? Now think of a single person, obviously unknown to you, in present Erbil and one in ancient Arbela. Your contemporary is separated by space; the ancient, by time. Can you empathize? Can you feel the fear in either? To “feel” you need to be somehow “near.”
In the geography of your life you have some choice on what you allow to be proximal and distal. Some are gifted to be close to all and to see each as a person worth empathy. Some are, like the nucleus of an atom, withdrawn far from the peripheral orbiting electrons, a tiny dot 100,000 times smaller than the atom it centers. What is the distance between you and all that encircles you?
First, Time. A contemporary thirty-year-old wasn’t even alive during the near meltdown of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island’s nuclear reactor. Long ago equates to no memory and no feeling unless some education has occurred.
Second, Space. A senior citizen in Tokyo probably paid only passing attention to the Three Mile Island incident. How did the same person respond when a tsunami breached the sea wall of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant?
You can shorten distance and compress time when you want, of course. It doesn’t matter whether or not the object of your attention is distant in either time or space. In varying degrees of interest and concern, you now survey even that with which you had no previous connection. In an age of constant media bombardment, there are very few shelters to keep you from the shrapnel of information. Everywhere comes to you. Everywhere can become proximal.
The process of making something proximate can be either beneficial or detrimental.
Your ability to empathize depends upon your corollary ability to make things “close.” But you can also disdain through the same process. Think of your relationship to the rest of the world as a matter of concentricity and diameters.
As a center, you are surrounded by both proximate and distal physical and social phenomena. The inner circles that orbit your personal concerns are important to you; the distant circles less so. The media can make almost everything anywhere close whether or not you want the knowledge or experience.
Because you have the ability to make the distal proximate, you can “feel” for the victims of war, disease, and natural disaster. You can have both positive and negative feelings about any of these victims. If you perceive the “victim” of war is your enemy, then you probably rejoice in his misfortune. The ability to make something proximate has built in limitations, however. An estimated 100 billion humans have gone before you, and the time that separates you from them is a “distance” that protects you from overwhelming empathy or disdain.
For a moment, to understand my point, try to envision modern Erbil and ancient Arbela, the same city separated by time in the autonomous region of Kurdistan. As I write this, forces of ISIS threaten the modern city. Millennia ago the predecessor city Arbela was threatened by various warring factions, including the Assyrians, Medes, and even the Macedonians. Past and present residents suffered the cruelties of violence. Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king, for example, beheaded people who opposed him. What about your feelings for those who were killed by ruthless leaders and their minions or those who suffered the hardship war and conquest imposed thousands of years ago? Now think of a single person, obviously unknown to you, in present Erbil and one in ancient Arbela. Your contemporary is separated by space; the ancient, by time. Can you empathize? Can you feel the fear in either? To “feel” you need to be somehow “near.”
In the geography of your life you have some choice on what you allow to be proximal and distal. Some are gifted to be close to all and to see each as a person worth empathy. Some are, like the nucleus of an atom, withdrawn far from the peripheral orbiting electrons, a tiny dot 100,000 times smaller than the atom it centers. What is the distance between you and all that encircles you?
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