[lbo-talk] Mirror neurons

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Thu Sep 6 17:06:31 PDT 2007


Dennis Claxton wrote:


>>I do not step on ants, or yell at my relatives. I feel bad when I
>>hear news of a stranger dying in a heat wave. How did I score? ;-)
>>
>> --ravi
>>
>>
>
>
>Ok, I'll change the question: Do you feel the
>same empathy when a stranger dies as when it's someone close to you?
>
>This is an age old question explored very nicely
>in an article called "Killing a Chinese Mandarin:
>The Moral Implications of Distance" by Carlo
>Ginzburg. I've clipped an excerpt below.
>
>
>
Of course, the question gets a new translation under capitalism: recall the scene at the end of Third Man where Orson Wells says to Joseph Cotton, pointing to the people shrinking below, as the ferris wheel takes them to airplane distance above the ground.

"Imagine each one of those dots is worth 80,000 pounds. What would you do old fellow?"

Joanna



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