Empathy as Elevated Form of Understanding – Arnold’s Monday Motivation

Arnold’s Monday Motivation
“Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self.”

Someone sent this to me this week, and it said it was from Plato. I looked it up, and apparently, he never said this (just like a lot of quotes I see from myself!). But that doesn’t bother me. It’s a great quote, and we can all learn from it.

It’s easy to have an opinion. Today, it’s easier than ever to broadcast your opinion to everybody. Unfortunately, because of the way social media works, it’s the negative opinions that get the most love. People love to complain or criticize. It doesn’t take much effort, and it’s an easy way to get likes.

Like always, I’m asking you guys to take the harder road. Try to understand other people. Find your empathy.

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Anne Frank Play – 1956 Berlin Performance, Kenneth Tynan on

And at the Schlosspark, last Monday, I survived the most dramatic emotional experience the theatre has ever given me. It had little to do with art, for the play was not a great one, yet its effect, in Berlin, at that moment of history, transcended anything that art has yet learned to achieve. It invaded the privacy of the whole audience: I tried hard to stay detached, but the general catharsis engulfed me. Like all great theatrical occasions, this was not only a theatrical occasion: it involved the world outside. The first page of the programme prepared one: a short, stark essay on collective guilt. Turn over for the title: The Diary of Anne Frank, directed by Boleslaw Barlach. It is not a vengeful dramatisation. Quietly, often gaily, it re-creates the daily life of eight Jews who hid for two years in an Amsterdam attic before the Gestapo broke in. Otto Frank was the sole survivor: Anne was killed in Belsen.

When I saw the play in New York it vaguely perturbed me: there seemed no need to do it: it smacked of exploitation. The Berlin actors (especially Johanna von Koczian and Walter Franck) were better on the whole and devouter than the Americans, but I do not think that was why the play seemed so much more urgent and necessary on Monday night. After the interval the man in front of me put his head in his hands and did not afterwards look at the stage. He was not, I believe, Jewish. It was not until the end that one fully appreciated Barlog’s wisdom and valour in using an entirely non-Jewish cast. Having read the last lines of the diary, which affirm, movingly and irrationally, Anne Frank’s unshattered trust in human goodness, Otto Frank closes the book and says, very slowly: ‘She puts me to shame.’

Thus the play ended. The houselights went up on an audience that sat drained and ashen, some staring straight ahead, others staring at the ground, for a full half-minute. Then, as if awakening from a nightmare, they rose and filed out in total silence, not looking at each other, avoiding even the customary blinks of recognition with which friend greets friend. There was no applause, and there were no curtain-calls.

All of this, I am well aware, is not drama criticism. In the shadow of an event so desperate and traumatic, criticism would be an irrelevance. I can only record an emotion that I felt, would not have missed, and pray never to feel again.

Berlin Postscript
Observer, 7 October 1956

From:
Theatre Writings
Kenneth Tynan

Non-complementary Behaviour and The Sermon on the Mount

It reminded me of the clichéd lessons I heard at church as a kid. Like the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

Sure, you think. Swell plan, Jesus–if we were all saints. Problem is: we’re all too human. And in the real world, turning the other cheek is about the most naive thing you can do. Right?

Only recently did I realise Jesus was advocating a quite rational principle. Modern psychologists call it non-complementary behaviour. Most of the time, as I mentioned earlier, we humans mirror each other. Someone gives you a compliment, you’re quick to return the favour. Somebody says something unpleasant, and you feel the urge to make a snide comeback. In earlier chapters we saw how powerful these positive and negative feedback loops can become in schools and companies and democracies.

When you’re treated with kindness, it’s easy to do the right thing. Easy, but not enough. To quote Jesus again, ‘If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?’

Humankind
Rutger Bregman

The Burden of Someone Else’s Dream

When we lived in England my days had a familiar rhythm. Each morning, my mother flung open the curtains in my room, and I tugged my school jumper over my head and pulled on my skirt before tumbling downstairs to eat cereal with my younger brother Jon. After school, we’d play on the swing in our garden, or crouch at the far end of the stream to watch dragonflies hovering above the gold-green surface.

I was used to this rhythm; I liked it and thought it would never change. Until one morning over breakfast, my father announced that we were going to sail around the world.

I paused, a spoonful of cornflakes halfway to my mouth.

“We’re going to follow Captain Cook,” Dad said. “After all, we share the captain’s surname, so who better to do it?” He picked up his cigarette and leaned back in his seat.

“Are you joking?” I asked.

Next to me, Jon watched Dad, his lips parted.

“Not at all,” said my father, puffing out a cloud of smoke. “I’m deadly serious.”

“But why?”

“Well, someone needs to mark the 200th anniversary of Cook’s third voyage, don’t they?” he said, raising his eyebrows at my mother.

“Of course they do, Gordon,” said Mum, returning his smile.

‘Dad said: We’re going to follow Captain Cook’: how an endless round-the-world voyage stole my childhood
In 1976, Suzanne Heywood’s father decided to take the family on a three-year sailing ‘adventure’ – and then just kept going. It was a journey into fear, isolation and danger …

This is an excerpt from the book:
Wavewalker: Breaking Free
by Suzanne Heywood

Protest in France

Today’s political moment feels very similar to the early phases of the Yellow Vest movement in 2018, when a proposed hike in the fuel tax unleashed weeks of demonstrations. Then, too, there was simmering anger from households struggling to make ends meet, widespread support for disruptive protest and a stunning aloofness from the people in charge. As in the early days of that conflict, Mr. Macron went weeks without publicly addressing the pension battle at length, forcing his prime minister to take the heat instead. His first major address on the topic since protests began was panned by critics as tone-deaf and condescending.

“There’s a form of disconnect,” Laurent Berger, the general secretary of the country’s largest labor confederation, the C.F.D.T., which prides itself on its ability to negotiate and compromise, told me. “There needs to be an end to this verticality where only a precious few are right and everybody else is wrong.” That obstinacy has pushed France into a political crisis — one that raises questions over the very architecture of the Fifth Republic and the extensive power it hands the head of state. How is it possible for a president without a parliamentary majority to ram through such an unpopular policy?

France Is Furious
Cole Stangler
Mr. Stangler is a journalist based in France who writes about the country’s politics and culture.

Also following the news at Reddit r/france

Réforme des retraites – les slogans des manifs – Difficile de faire un choix… Au début, ça me faisait sourire. Au final, j’ai juste le seum.
by u/artsnumeriques in france

Lance Reddick – Memorable TV Shows and Movies – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/arts/television/lance-reddick-tv-shows-movies.html

The Wire
Reddick’s breakthrough role came in 2002 with the role of Cedric Daniels, who began the critically acclaimed HBO series as a principled but ambitious lieutenant in the narcotics unit of the Baltimore Police Department.

Fringe
Most stars of the fascinatingly loopy Fox sci-fi drama “Fringe” played multiple parts in multiple universes, creating several versions of primary and alternate characters. Reddick starred as Special Agent Phillip Broyles in one universe and Colonel Broyles in the other. (In the third season, the actor had the surreal task of playing Agent Broyles meeting the dead body of Colonel Broyles.)

Corporate
Reddick spoofed his own stoic severity in several comedic roles — highlights include an inappropriate toy store manager in a Funny or Die sketch; a guest spot in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in which he struggles to control his temper; and an appearance on Eric André’s Adult Swim talk show that started strange and just got stranger. André seemed just as befuddled as the audience when Reddick punched the desk and left, before returning later to dramatically declare that he wished he were LeVar Burton.

Bosch
After doing “The Wire” and “Fringe” back to back, Reddick was hesitant to play another top cop role. But Irvin Irving in the Amazon crime drama “Bosch” is not just another cop — the Los Angeles chief of police is more of a political animal who loves power games.

John Wick
Reddick’s most popular film role came late in his career: Charon, the sleek concierge at the Continental Hotel in the “John Wick” movie franchise. As an employee of a Manhattan establishment that catered to traveling assassins, Charon — named after the ferryman of Hades in Greek mythology — was the soul of discretion. But he was especially sympathetic to the needs of one guest in particular: the very dangerous John Wick (Keanu Reeves).