Week 9 and Week 10
I believe people tend to feel catharsis at tragic and unfortunate events because these unlock hidden and repressed moral, spiritual, and emotional instincts that humans feel are too impolite to share or express. These true and genuine feelings are taboo, and only come out in the most inappropriate and inauspicious of times. Thus, when watching the worst events happen, especially to people or places removed from us, we feel confirmed and grounded. We see that life not only has a capacity to harm our highest officers, but that forces of nature can and will assign misfortune at a moment’s notice. This powerful and wholesome feeling gives us pleasure because it makes life more realistic and meaningful. It gives us a certain pleasure that we have inimical flaws that keep us from ascending to the Garden of Eden. We are addicted to our own tribal, animalistic instincts.
I felt this most acutely when several conservative leaders started to contract serious coronavirus infections. Despite my civic and moral self-wishing them well, my tragic and maudlin side wanted death. I wanted to be proven right. This unhealthy, repressed evil person rationalized to me all the great effects of a dead leader and the specter of a more competent replacement. Even though my true self was shocked by what he was hearing, my old animalistic brain was pining for a release that I had not felt for a long while.
Blog 9
Kissinger once said power was an aphrodisiac, fear can elicit a similar non-sexual thrill. People tend to seek out risky, dangerous, and fearful experiences because it grounds us with a sense of mortality. While most of us fear death and have a great desire to live long beyond our years, human beings have a capacity to indulge in extended negative behavior that can or does lead to earlier and more painful deaths. Risky behavior such as dangerous driving, excessive eating, smoking, and drinking are all sins that humans engage with in order to enjoy their short and temporary lives. Richer people such as the Queen's mother often justified risky and fear-inducing behavior as a contrast to the boring correctness of living correctly. Some people desire more acute fear to make connect themselves more deeply to some mysterious human spirit. Some people, sometimes jokingly and sometimes seriously, cite killing as a connection to god and other souls. Whatever fear-inducing activity people partake in, it conjures and summons a deep animalistic spirit and thrill that ties us to our original selves.
Interesting reflections here! One thing Aristotle points out is that tragedy goes against our moral expectations since it is relatively underserving people who suffer out of proportion to their faults. If the person suffering was actually a bad person, he says, we would actually derive pleasure from that person's suffering
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