beda 11: people vs characters
Yesterday's angry blog post that no one read because it was stupid got me thinking about something.
What's the difference between "people" and "characters?"
I have a few musings on this difference.
I am a person. I have strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes and imperfections and bad days and complex feelings and complex emotions. I am full of organs and only I know that my thumbs crack weirdly and that at this exact moment one of the stitches in the bottom right corner of my mouth hurts. Only I know exactly how that feels.
The reason stereotypes exist is because it's easier to empathize with something that isn't real or true. Something that's basic and that you don't have to think about. Something that is so void of anything "actual" that it becomes relatable to you. So we have all these ideas of stereotypes and of "normal, typical, everyday people" in our brain and we just mix those ideas with our own experiences and thoughts and emotions, and then we can project those stereotypes onto real, actual people. Then those real, actual people stop being actual people in our brains, and they become the people that we see and the people that we can understand and empathize with.
Everything in the world that we see, we see with our own experiences and actions and feelings and thoughts projecting themselves onto the item in question. We use our own observations where we don't so much see the item, but we see what the item represents. When you see a pencil, what you see literally is a piece of wood with lead inside with a rubber thing on the end, but what you "see" is a way to communicate and you see your memories of holding your first #2 Ticonderoga pencil in Kindergarten while someone is trying to explain to you what those weird scribbly things next to the picture of Spot the Dog mean.
Everything is a symbol and a metaphor and means something and has value.
So when you see another human being -- someone who is also taking in everything and projecting themselves onto everything -- and you project that bit of yourself onto that person, they stop being a person. They become a character. A character in your life, and you see them how you want to see them and make judgments based on your own past. So you use all those stereotypes and fictional people and your own knowledge to create a character on top of a person.
There is value in "imagining people complexly," but you can't empathize with a person. You have to put yourself onto them, see that bit of yourself in another person, before you can empathize. And then you're empathizing with a character.
None of this really makes sense my brain is stupid and bad at communicating its ideas. So this is my blog hope you like it I'm gonna go try to write a book but will probably end up re-reading Catcher in the Rye.
What's the difference between "people" and "characters?"
I have a few musings on this difference.
I am a person. I have strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes and imperfections and bad days and complex feelings and complex emotions. I am full of organs and only I know that my thumbs crack weirdly and that at this exact moment one of the stitches in the bottom right corner of my mouth hurts. Only I know exactly how that feels.
The reason stereotypes exist is because it's easier to empathize with something that isn't real or true. Something that's basic and that you don't have to think about. Something that is so void of anything "actual" that it becomes relatable to you. So we have all these ideas of stereotypes and of "normal, typical, everyday people" in our brain and we just mix those ideas with our own experiences and thoughts and emotions, and then we can project those stereotypes onto real, actual people. Then those real, actual people stop being actual people in our brains, and they become the people that we see and the people that we can understand and empathize with.
Everything in the world that we see, we see with our own experiences and actions and feelings and thoughts projecting themselves onto the item in question. We use our own observations where we don't so much see the item, but we see what the item represents. When you see a pencil, what you see literally is a piece of wood with lead inside with a rubber thing on the end, but what you "see" is a way to communicate and you see your memories of holding your first #2 Ticonderoga pencil in Kindergarten while someone is trying to explain to you what those weird scribbly things next to the picture of Spot the Dog mean.
Everything is a symbol and a metaphor and means something and has value.
So when you see another human being -- someone who is also taking in everything and projecting themselves onto everything -- and you project that bit of yourself onto that person, they stop being a person. They become a character. A character in your life, and you see them how you want to see them and make judgments based on your own past. So you use all those stereotypes and fictional people and your own knowledge to create a character on top of a person.
There is value in "imagining people complexly," but you can't empathize with a person. You have to put yourself onto them, see that bit of yourself in another person, before you can empathize. And then you're empathizing with a character.
None of this really makes sense my brain is stupid and bad at communicating its ideas. So this is my blog hope you like it I'm gonna go try to write a book but will probably end up re-reading Catcher in the Rye.
this reminds me a lot of a thing somewhere that talked about v much the same thing. the word tree being a word and just a word, and the connections we make and extrapolate from that is very much a personal, sometimes cultural thing. i can't remember exactly how the thing phrased it, but it was extremely interesting. ugh ugh i think it was something by dfw but idr. "authority and american usage" which is in consider the lobster. if you're super super interested. but that's just a small portion of the piece and most of the rest is super dense and involving
also i really love your blogger theme a lot1!