Learned Insanity

[trickykitty]

- I mentioned before about how aggravated I was when the kid in junior high died and everyone was sad at school and wouldn't go home to grieve in private, but instead became a mob of disruption at school for a few days. I was also mad because it didn't seem like anyone wanted to speak out about how stupid these kids were playing around with a loaded weapon in the first place, and I was the one accused of being heartless for supposedly "not caring."

- I recall after 9/11 being bombarded by people insisting that I wasn't showing proper caring and patriotism by not buying and waving lots of American flags everywhere.

- I'm pretty sure I previously posted either the quote or the video of Avon from Blake's 7 with his lines, "I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or indeed why it should be necessary to prove it at all." (If I didn't, well, here's a link, and the scene in question starts at 1:55.)

- Then, about a month ago, I watched this video talking about joint attention and giving some really great examples. (I just about fell out of my chair at 2:08.)

"It's as though emotions are a foreign language he can't interpret."

"Reacting to other people's fear is a basic survival instinct."

"Their heart rate responses are no different from those of mentally retarded children who have the same developmental level, so I think that they very much have feelings, but they have a very hard time explaining these feelings to themselves or expressing them in ways that other people can understand."

- Emotions can be (and usually are) easily misattributed.

- People rely quite a lot on others' emotions when determining the threat level of a situation. (This one matches up pretty strongly with the joint attention video above.)

"When confronted with a potential emergency, people typically play it cool, adopt a look of nonchalance, and monitor the reactions of others to determine if a crisis is really at hand."

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In conclusion:

Reacting emotionally and irrationally is not only considered the norm, but is also considered a basic survival instinct. Acting irrationally to a toy robot because other people are acting with irrational fear is a valued trait. Buying up lots of flags because "it's the thing to do" marks one as being a caring individual, while focusing on rational, logical thinking and deciding to take a nap while everyone else is panicking labels one as an uncaring, sociopathic monster.

And finally:

Expressing one's feelings to others is important, otherwise they won't know when to act like a lynch mob posse. Someone's got to be the ring leader. It might as well be you. Speak up about how you really feel about the robots taking over the world, and you'll get lots of people happily sympathizing and cowering with you and a few grand heroes standing up for you and beating back the threat with their mighty kick to the robot groin.

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Speaking of emotions, I don't feel like talking about mine right now.