About Germany, I’d love to visit Berlin soon, but no, I’m not there. That’s what’s lovely about the internet: it fails as much as everything else in life! I’m still in Portugal, Oso. If I leave I’ll let you know.

Catherine, blessings and respect to your comments! It’s good to know there are more people in the world thinking like you. I absolutely subscribe all you said.

Thank you, David, for bringing nice people together. And for paying attention to all of us.

You have at least two or three posts on my own Mt. Rushmore. And here you are being a scientist in the meantime. You try to make the rest of us look lazy!

Gregory,

I’m not sure if I view human nature as immutable or not. My hunch is that it’s not. But even if it is, our behaviors change over time as social norms are communicated across communities. New media is one – and the fastest ever – platform to do that.

Onnik,

Since we seem to be repeating ourselves here, I’ll repeat my response to you: your behavior in reaching out, caring about, and advocating for a cause about strangers from a country you’ve never even been to is an anomaly and something we should all aspire to. Still, as you said in response to my question, you’ve been following the Azeri blogosphere for years and you’ve developed an emotional investment over that time. You haven’t, for example, developed the same level of investment in Abdulla Mohsen, which is why you haven’t written about him. That’s what Catherine is stressing – it takes time to care about someone. (And, my post about Emin and Adnan is forthcoming … but it is mostly to spread awareness. I don’t think the post itself will lead to their release.)

Catherine,

Indeed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribalism#Tribalism_and_evolution

I look forward to hearing how your NYT front cover experiment goes. As far as Pamuk goes, I agree that we often aim to place a book within our own personal narrative rather than placing ourselves in the narrative of a book. I consider both to be the great joys of reading.

Fatima,

Germany? I guess I haven’t been listening enough … Of course, we’re all overburdened with too much information and too little time. Which is why choosing our priorities becomes more and more important. I find all of this talk of the lack of free will strange, when in fact we’re making more choices which define our life path than ever before.

Thanks for all the comments!

Orhan Pamuk was here at Harvard a few weeks back talking about the “center” of a novel. I heard this second hand from Jill (and would link to it if I wasn’t such a dummy), but he said something along the lines of different people finding different centers of the novel depending on their perspective. I’ve had this experience myself–some things that were really resonant at one point in my life just aren’t anymore (take Contact, for example) because my perspective has shifted over time.

I guess it all comes down to life experience (which goes beyond just listening to others); the more you have the wider variety of perspectives you can take. Once you’ve internalized those experiences, once they’ve become personal to you, it’s easier to find empathy. I mean, by definition, you can’t empathize with someone if you don’t have any personal understanding of their situation, if you can’t relate to the way they’re feeling.

So then does that mean that people who don’t have much life experience (by choice or not) are necessarily less moral? Hmmm, I’m not sure you can make that jump. Maybe morality comes more from the ability to respect another’s humanness, whether you can empathize with it or not. There’s some level of humility involved there too (recognizing that you don’t know what you don’t know, and that your perspective isn’t the only valid way of looking at the world). Think about how much more peaceful, how much more moral, a world this would be if people weren’t so sure they were right all the time.

Yes, you’re right, we’re probably not listening enough… We go through a lot of information and other stimulus without paying enough attention to them. Yet, I think this is probably the only way to do it. It is too much, too fast! We’re just not capable of absorving everything. And it is endless! Yet, we are curious/ interested, if not more, in knowing where we can find it, in knowing what others talk about, in being included, integrated, loved.

I stare at my screen and I have at least 15 website windows open. Am I “listening” to them all? No. But I do try my best to pay attention to the people I care about and the information they share, online or offline. I like to believe they do the same with me. And yes, we focus on our own interests and we do like to impress and look better. It was probably always like that, you say. Maybe not so obviously… But that is our way to keep the attention, which is so vital to us alone, which is what makes “together”. Do I want to impress you with this? Do I want your attention? You bet!!! Micro is macro.

I read this yesterday, on Keri Smith’s “Guerrila Art Kit”: “To pay attention: this is our endless and proper work” – Mary Oliver

Are you listening? Thank you.

I love your time tracking idea. I would totally do that, but I know exactly what it would tell me: 90% of the time I spend on my computer gets spent looking at work stuff, and once I’m done with work I barely have time to keep up with the stuff that I’m interested in let alone seek out info on stuff about which I have no context. Google Reader Trends are great, but mostly what I end up doing is scanning headlines. I’ll only really read something if it’s on a topic that already interests me. I feel guilty about it, but it hasn’t changed my behavior.

Instead what I’ve started doing is taking the front page of the Sunday NY Times to someplace where I’m more likely to read every article (the laundromat, for example). I’m thinking about picking an article every month or so and learning as much about that topic as I can, then blogging about my experience with ignorance. It brings up a whole ‘nother slew of questions about how I pick what I’m going to read up on, how much info I can actually get from just reading crap online or checking out books from the library, etc. Anyway, I’ll let you know if that’s any more successful than Google Reader.

On the other hand, one thing I’ve noticed. The final statement on Adnan and Emin as well as other bloggers has not been released as it was meant to be today, and also, only a handful of people there seemed interested in the case to me. While covering the trial via Twitter and hoping for some response via the WBF2009 there wasn’t much. And now, a few days later, I also see only a few people bothered to use their blogs to raise awareness either to their case or any others.

So, perhaps I would say that your statement implies everyone is like that, but I don’t support that view. Meanwhile, I would add that the general approach seems to be “out of sight, out of mind.” Unfortunately.

the only way to developed the actual abilities to be aware in a holistic manner are under the purvey of spiritual practices that expand consciousness to more subtle levels of functioning …

they are all non-verbal, internal, and rarely mentioned in popular publishing ..

you want to change character, they are the only tools ..