Reading, empathy and virtual community

I've given that title because it seems to me that it describes what the research seems to show. I'm pleased to find some confirmation of something I'd suspected for a long-time. In my case that although I'm a MBTI 'E', in fact my love of reading has been a form of meeting the need to engage my thinking 'out there' -at least in the sense it gives me even if not always in reality.
Becoming a vampire without being bitten: Reading expands our self-concepts, study shows: "When we read, we psychologically become part of the community described in the narrative -- be they wizards or vampires. That mechanism satisfies the deeply human, evolutionarily crucial, need for belonging."
Of course this report brings together the stuff we are discovering about the importance of narrative and also the inbuilt empathy/mimetic thing we have. My suspicion is that a similar, or perhaps the same, psychological mechanisms are at work with online and more fully virtual relationships.

The report of the same research in Psychology Today seems to equate the love of reading with introversion, but I'm not convinced by that: I think there is an extrovert way of reading which is about enjoyment of the engagement with other minds and, in the case of fiction, an ersatz engagement with others imaginitevily. Let's remember that no encounter with a live other is free of 'fantasy' and imagination, so there is is a link.

What it makes me revisit though, is the question of the use of fiction in some academic pursuits where the development and reflection on the human condition are at a premium. Things like pastoral care or spirituality to take two that I tend to deal with. I suspect those who deal with literature studies will probably be thinking "told you so", but so be it. The challenge would be how to properly use fiction in such case -both for stimulating thought, reflection and insight and also in assessment.

I'm not stuck in a crowd -I am the crowd!

It's a while since I posted under my new 'hell is other people' tag, but this article set me in mind of it. I'd mentioned that my frustrations are often in crowds, and this article seems to identify some significant observations (related to chaos and complexity research).

a pedestrian seeks simply to minimize congestion in his visual field by walking towards the empty spaces he can see, while at the same time adjusting his speed in order to maintain a safe distance from the nearest obstacle. Digital simulations using this model have demonstrated that these two simple rules are sufficient to reproduce a broad range of the collective behaviors observed in crowds, such as the spontaneous formation of unidirectional lanes in opposite directions. Furthermore, as the density of pedestrians increases, the model can predict the emergence of new phenomena, such as the accordion effect characterized by successive forward waves of movement, interspersed with periods during which the pedestrians stand still (stop-and-go). Above a critical density threshold, a combination of these rules with the effect of physical contacts between pedestrians can spontaneously provoke gigantic, collective crushes. This phenomenon, referred to as turbulence, was observed during the accidents that occurred in Mecca in 2006 and characterizes the dynamics of a crowd in a dangerous situation, where pedestrians are overwhelmed by chaotic movement.

Now I can identify very easily with the basic strategy outlined above: I have realised that it's what I do. I think though, that where it goes wrong for me is that I tend to walk a darn sight faster than most people and so the flow and response manoeuvres of others So, in effect, as I suspected, I'm causing turbulence -reminds me of the 'not stuck in traffic you are traffic' issue. So, once again, 'hell is other people' becomes reflexive: we can't just objectivise it we have to view ourselves as part of the system and attend to our own part in it. Nothing surprising for a Christian perspective there: '... first take the log out of your own eye ...'.

What's the French for burqa?

Written the day before the French law regarding facial covering in public (the actual title en Anglais is The Bill Prohibiting Facial Dissimulation in a Public Place) came into force. I'd meant to write about it then but "life got in the way" it'll be interesting to see how it works out.. The article is here: Libert�, �galit�, fraternit� – unless, of course, you would like to wear a burqa | Viv Groskop | Comment is free | The Observer:
Now the way it works is interesting, perhaps even quite clever:
"if they wear a veil over their face in a public place, anyone can ask them to uncover their face – or leave. ... If a woman refuses to co-operate, citizens are advised to call the police. The fine is €150."
I say possibly it is clever because it relies on activist citizens to enforce it. So if people aren't really bothered it come to be a dead letter: though, of course it would remain a bully's charter in those circumstances.
I must confess I'm also wondering whether we will see political opponents monkeying around with this. Now the article seems good at putting the arguments in favour though comes out unhappy at the illiberality of it -a perspective I tend to share. I'd rather they didn't but I'm sure I don't want to criminalise those who do -I can think of some styles of dress I'd far rather criminalise if we were to go down that road and most of them involve more cloth not less!

Anyway one comment would offer a potential test case and, having just been reading up about EHR equality legislation this is very opposite:

Presumably, it's now against the law in France to attend a fancy dress party dressed as Zorro or Catwoman. Because if there's one rule for one set of people who cover their face, that same rule should surely apply to anyone whose face is not immediately visible

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So political opponents prepared to go into non-violennt resistance mode could do precisely those things and see what the reaction is. I'll leave you to work out the ramifications depending on whether people do or don't react to Zorro, catwoman or Spiderman in the boulevards and rues. Anyway let's see if that happens particularly in the ski season ...

And then there are the reductio ad absurdam cases:

Le Figaro has already expressed distress that it is technically against the law to wear a ski mask in a public place. Bad news for the black run at Val d'Isère. Aren't there some rampant beards that might sprout dangerously in the direction of facial dissimulation? What happens if you make your living as Papa Noel at Nouvelles Galeries' answer to Santa's grotto?

Presumably there will be case law approaches develop; but how they can do so without falling foul of EHRC is an interesting point and one to watch.

What says 'city'?

C Beebies' Me Too makes Newcastle the archetypal cityscape: river, bridges, a building suspiciously like The Sage on the Gateshead side. The only bit of London I can see in their CGI cityscape is 'the gherkin. And the presenter keeps going past the Life Centre. Just been watching with Tilly.

Right or left values: more literal than you think

The evidence seems to be piling in nowadays, here's some more: Are your values right or left? The answer is more literal than you think: "'We use mental metaphors to structure our thinking about abstract things,' says psychologist Daniel Casasanto, 'One of those metaphors is space.'"
This is related to what I quote often from Philosophy in the Flesh which for its faults, nevertheless seems to be proving right in its prediction that further brain research would uncover the fundamentally metaphoric basis of much of our 'higher order' thinking. The basic idea is that the neurological schemas (for want of a better term, I'm not a neuro-psychologist) we use for handling space (among other things) in terms of processing informations and decisions about our placement and movement in space are co-opted by the brain to think about other things. Hence 'Up is good'. This bit of research seems to indicate another spatial metaphor such that (I think) 'right hand man' seems to have more than co-incidental basis: it's a motivated sign. But don't go determinist with this:

"People generally believe that their judgments are rational and their concepts are stable," says Casasanto. "But if a few minutes of gentle training can flip our judgments about what's good or bad, then perhaps the mind is more malleable than people think."

Research says: eat less meat; grow healthier

The research indicates that a more vegetable based diet is healthier for us. The so-called 'Jesus diet' which is basically 1st century palestinian peasant fare would have only had meat once a week maybe a bit more if the there were leftovers and maybe we should take a leaf out of that garden (geddit?).  The research says:

vegetarians had lower triglycerides, glucose levels, blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index (BMI). Semi-vegetarians also had a significantly lower BMI and waist circumference compared to those who ate meat more regularly.

I suspect, but the report doesn't say, that the issue is animal fats: if I'm right that means not substituting full-fat cheese for meat, for example ... so something more vegan as well.

So, not only is eating less meat better for the planet (less cattle etc, less resource use) and the food reserves of the world (feed less domestic animals, feed more humans) but it's actually healthier for us.
You know it makes sense; come on people; how can eating less meat NOT be the Christian thing to do?

The power of the pack

Earlier today our dog Alfi was out with me on a walk in a large open-ish space of common land near where we live. Part of the way into the walk, along a path, I saw a small pack of small spaniels, two on a lead and one free-roaming accompanied by a young lady. I had seen these dogs before: when they were younger there were about 6 of them and Alfi had encountered them before: they had used their numbers to intimidate Alfi on that occasion and this time, poor thing, he sat down, trembling, facing away from these spaniels. Clearly his previous encounter had been etched into his memory. In actual fact these dogs, this time, seemed quite friendly and willing to be friendly, unfortunately Alfi didn't read it that way. These little dogs scared him out of his wits. The dog walker arranged to take her dogs on a little way so that I could call Alfi to go past them without getting too clase, which he did.

But it got me thinking about the power of the pack: where an individual is a different proposition to a mob or group working to some degree together. It puts me in mind of a passage early in The Eternal Child where the author imagines early humans terrorising the neighbourhood simply because they were able to work together: as single creatures we would have been leapard meat, as a pack something to strike terror into other critters.
Pack (canine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia