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Suffering: Why Does It Entertain You?

sprinkles

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Still drawing a :huh: from me.

It's like this: if you put a camera in a workplace to study a work environment, and you tell the workers that you are doing the study, they are going to act completely differently.

If I told everyone that I'm purposely doing an equivocation to demonstrate something and to see what responses would be, people are going to act differently.
 

Lark

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It doesnt entertain me, it motivates me though, my own idiosyncratic ideology hinges upon the moral good of seeking to remove all avoidable suffering.
 

zelo1954

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I think there are three extreme responses to suffering. One is detachment. Another is empathy. A third is "schadenfreude". In action films the very genre leads us to view it in detached mode. We aren't actually taking pleasure in viewing the suffering of others, rather the suffering is simply an intrinsic part of the film and of no particular consequence. I would like to think this #1 is in the majority film-wise by far. I can't believe schadenfreude accounts for more than a few odd percent unless I'm grossly overestimating human nature. Empathy is the interesting one. It is perfectly possible to "enjoy" (in the broadest sense of the word) a film about suffering when you deeply connect with the character who is suffering. I don't know what a professional psychological opinion would be here, but my view is that this a perfectly normal and healthy situation. You want to put yourself in the shoes of the sufferer. And this, imo, comes nowhere close to masochism.
 

DiscoBiscuit

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Suffering means different things to different people:

ufc-forrest-griffin-stephan-bonnar.jpg


These two seem to be enjoying themselves.
 

Salomé

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It's like this: if you put a camera in a workplace to study a work environment, and you tell the workers that you are doing the study, they are going to act completely differently.

If I told everyone that I'm purposely doing an equivocation to demonstrate something and to see what responses would be, people are going to act differently.

I see. I guess it's just as well you didn't explain that then. ;)
 

Qlip

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I knew what you were driving at sprinkles.

Actually, when I was young I used to be disturbed about the moral implications of creating an entire universe in story in order to persecute the characters. I'm not sure why it took so long to figure out I am NF.
 

Eilonwy

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Maybe not quite what you were looking for, but a writer friend of mine once told me that it's very difficult to tell an interesting story without conflict. He wrote some of the "Dinotopia" books and told me they were the most difficult stories he ever wrote because he had to contrive conflict without introducing any violence or real harm.
 

Salomé

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I syphilis don't get it.
 

Salomé

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^
(that was meant to say "still", but is equally good advice)
 

Lark

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I knew what you were driving at sprinkles.

Actually, when I was young I used to be disturbed about the moral implications of creating an entire universe in story in order to persecute the characters. I'm not sure why it took so long to figure out I am NF.

There's some absolutely great passages in the book Beauty, a fantasy or sci fi masterworks book, cant remember which, on this exact topic.

The authors of prize winning series of crime fiction or horror stories are persecuted by devils in hell in precisely the way that they did characters in novels because they are deemed responsible for turning the culture of the world ugly and toxic with it.
 

sprinkles

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There's some absolutely great passages in the book Beauty, a fantasy or sci fi masterworks book, cant remember which, on this exact topic.

The authors of prize winning series of crime fiction or horror stories are persecuted by devils in hell in precisely the way that they did characters in novels because they are deemed responsible for turning the culture of the world ugly and toxic with it.

Wow, that's some meta stuff right there. Making a fiction in which devils persecute people who made fictions that persecute people.
 

SD45T-2

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Maybe not quite what you were looking for, but a writer friend of mine once told me that it's very difficult to tell an interesting story without conflict. He wrote some of the "Dinotopia" books and told me they were the most difficult stories he ever wrote because he had to contrive conflict without introducing any violence or real harm.
It's like David Mamet said; drama is not good things happening to nice people.
 

Lark

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Wow, that's some meta stuff right there. Making a fiction in which devils persecute people who made fictions that persecute people.

Oh yeah!

I thought to myself pretty deeply about the insight involved in it, whether or not I should be giving my attention to horror novels or ugliness in my own reading or writing and then I realised that the author herself had written crime stories or "ugly" things of the kind in which she was setting up the criticism.

It was a truly brilliant reframing and conception of ideas to do with sin, consequences, punishment etc. although it is all set in the context of a dystopian future which sees an overcrowded planet devoid of nature in which human kind commits a collective suicide from despair in the worst possible fashion (diving down rubbish shutes into incinerators, although doing so in such a volume that the shutes are packed to the opening and most people die of suffocation after being mangled by their fall).
 

sprinkles

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Oh yeah!

I thought to myself pretty deeply about the insight involved in it, whether or not I should be giving my attention to horror novels or ugliness in my own reading or writing and then I realised that the author herself had written crime stories or "ugly" things of the kind in which she was setting up the criticism.

It was a truly brilliant reframing and conception of ideas to do with sin, consequences, punishment etc. although it is all set in the context of a dystopian future which sees an overcrowded planet devoid of nature in which human kind commits a collective suicide from despair in the worst possible fashion (diving down rubbish shutes into incinerators, although doing so in such a volume that the shutes are packed to the opening and most people die of suffocation after being mangled by their fall).

Ah yeah. I suspected something dystopian would be involved. :)

Personally I think that kind of stuff is just fine to examine. But also I've learned through self reflection and mediation that what I take in colors me in certain ways. I think it's true that this stuff does effect me on some level.

I also notice that I get geared for one thing and slowly develop a repulsion for its opposite. If I watch too many violent movies or play too many violent games, my anxiousness and irritability increases and I lose tolerance for more peaceful things. If I'm playing games that are cute, or watching non dramatic films such documentaries about dolphins, or spending time out in nature, I'm less anxious, more peaceful and less irritable and I lose tolerance for the more violent forms of entertainment.

I just seem to be very aware of it and swing back and forth that way.
 

Lark

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Ah yeah. I suspected something dystopian would be involved. :)

Personally I think that kind of stuff is just fine to examine. But also I've learned through self reflection and mediation that what I take in colors me in certain ways. I think it's true that this stuff does effect me on some level.

I also notice that I get geared for one thing and slowly develop a repulsion for its opposite. If I watch too many violent movies or play too many violent games, my anxiousness and irritability increases and I lose tolerance for more peaceful things. If I'm playing games that are cute, or watching non dramatic films such documentaries about dolphins, or spending time out in nature, I'm less anxious, more peaceful and less irritable and I lose tolerance for the more violent forms of entertainment.

I just seem to be very aware of it and swing back and forth that way.

That definitely resonates with me!

I thought about it at the time that Kingdom Hearts was out and noticed the difference that playing it made to young people which I was working with as opposed to some violent ass first person shooter, although I noticed it myself when I played it and felt it had a cutesy, uplifting quality too. I definitely noticed it with books too, I first noticed that I had to switch between non-fiction and fiction, then I realised that a lot of my fiction reading was a counter weight in terms of positivity usually to the social criticism which was usually the non-fiction I was reading.

Its a difficult one though because I'll read stuff like Erich Fromm to top up my humanistic verve but if I come to it too late, then I'll not feel like reading at all.
 

sprinkles

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That definitely resonates with me!

I thought about it at the time that Kingdom Hearts was out and noticed the difference that playing it made to young people which I was working with as opposed to some violent ass first person shooter, although I noticed it myself when I played it and felt it had a cutesy, uplifting quality too. I definitely noticed it with books too, I first noticed that I had to switch between non-fiction and fiction, then I realised that a lot of my fiction reading was a counter weight in terms of positivity usually to the social criticism which was usually the non-fiction I was reading.

Its a difficult one though because I'll read stuff like Erich Fromm to top up my humanistic verve but if I come to it too late, then I'll not feel like reading at all.

I've noticed this in gaming communities where I've had the interesting perspective of being on both sides of a fence and watch the criticisms that pass over it.

There's mature and calm people on the violent gaming side, absolutely. And they are usually adults with families and a job and such. But there's a lot of young people that love to spew vitriol, especially at the non-violent gamers, like "that game is fucking gay! why would you play it?"

Interestingly it doesn't usually go the other way over the fence, unless it's from people who play both sides but tend to the violent side.
 
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