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People ask me why I have trouble sleeping
Oct. 2nd, 2010 01:01 pmLate last night, lying in bed, I started to hear raised voices somewhere in the middle distance. I couldn't make out any words, only the emotions. They seemed innocent at first: laughing, jocular. Then the voices seemed to turn alternately taunting and hostile. This went on for some time. Then I heard a scream, and the tones of the shouting became frightened and angry. I went to the window.
I couldn't see very much, because the altercation seemed to be happening in front of a pub across the main road, and I was peering over the roof of an intervening building. People were walking back and forth, with body language either slurred and drunken or hunched and concerned. I was concerned, but clearly unneeded, so I lay back down. I heard an ambulance siren -- not an unusual sound, as many of them are routed along that road on their way to their emergencies -- and my first thought was 'please, please let it pass by'. But the siren drew near, quieted, stopped for several minutes, and then started again, speeding away.
I lay in bed, concerned, helpless. And ashamed, upon reflection, of my wish that the ambulance was not there for some nasty result of the altercation by the pub, that it would pass by in service of some other emergency, elsewhere. I found a post hoc justification almost immediately -- that whatever unknown elsewhere emergency had a good chance of being some medical problem that no one could have prevented, whereas any medical emergency resulting from this altercation at the edges of my earshot would almost certainly be the result of violence. But this is not an honest reflection of my emotional reaction. I wasn't thinking about the probability of elsewhere emergencies being medical instead of violent. I just wanted the emergency to be elsewhere: for the people in physical (and therefore emotional) proximity to me not to be the ones in danger.
Hume pointed out that our moral sentiments seem to be highly dependent on the degree of empathy we feel for their subject. This is a problem -- so much so that it is often denied -- because, of course, we don't want this to be the case. When we reason about morality, it seems that it must have some kind of universal authority, or else be totally meaningless. This is why, in meta-ethics, emotivists (who argue that "ethics" are merely the meaningless expressions of our sentiments) have been singled out for particularly vitriolic venom, my own included. And yet... it seems undeniable that, whatever role they play in our moral judgements, our emotional sympathies are key in our moral motivations.
This, of course, has massive political consequences. We protect our own and those we perceive as 'our own'. It is very difficult to get people upset about injustices happening halfway across the world. It is very hard even for me, as a person who keeps herself very aware of these problems, to avoid cynicism (or, alternatively, to avoid falling into deep despair over the horrors of the world, when I widen my empathetic scope to include it all). But even taking the very rational approach, of recognizing the horrors but also my own limitations, it is hard to figure out just what I can do to combat them. Having now awoken, I don't want to lie back down.
I couldn't see very much, because the altercation seemed to be happening in front of a pub across the main road, and I was peering over the roof of an intervening building. People were walking back and forth, with body language either slurred and drunken or hunched and concerned. I was concerned, but clearly unneeded, so I lay back down. I heard an ambulance siren -- not an unusual sound, as many of them are routed along that road on their way to their emergencies -- and my first thought was 'please, please let it pass by'. But the siren drew near, quieted, stopped for several minutes, and then started again, speeding away.
I lay in bed, concerned, helpless. And ashamed, upon reflection, of my wish that the ambulance was not there for some nasty result of the altercation by the pub, that it would pass by in service of some other emergency, elsewhere. I found a post hoc justification almost immediately -- that whatever unknown elsewhere emergency had a good chance of being some medical problem that no one could have prevented, whereas any medical emergency resulting from this altercation at the edges of my earshot would almost certainly be the result of violence. But this is not an honest reflection of my emotional reaction. I wasn't thinking about the probability of elsewhere emergencies being medical instead of violent. I just wanted the emergency to be elsewhere: for the people in physical (and therefore emotional) proximity to me not to be the ones in danger.
Hume pointed out that our moral sentiments seem to be highly dependent on the degree of empathy we feel for their subject. This is a problem -- so much so that it is often denied -- because, of course, we don't want this to be the case. When we reason about morality, it seems that it must have some kind of universal authority, or else be totally meaningless. This is why, in meta-ethics, emotivists (who argue that "ethics" are merely the meaningless expressions of our sentiments) have been singled out for particularly vitriolic venom, my own included. And yet... it seems undeniable that, whatever role they play in our moral judgements, our emotional sympathies are key in our moral motivations.
This, of course, has massive political consequences. We protect our own and those we perceive as 'our own'. It is very difficult to get people upset about injustices happening halfway across the world. It is very hard even for me, as a person who keeps herself very aware of these problems, to avoid cynicism (or, alternatively, to avoid falling into deep despair over the horrors of the world, when I widen my empathetic scope to include it all). But even taking the very rational approach, of recognizing the horrors but also my own limitations, it is hard to figure out just what I can do to combat them. Having now awoken, I don't want to lie back down.
