Nothing much today, oh right, reassured myself of the fact that I really sucked at Gerontology, I only knew 8 of all the blanks in some crossword puzzle in the gerontology handbook, while siva and cherrie filled the blanks like a loaded machine gun.... with pin point accuracy~!! crazy.. crazy... oh well, sun I so called ditched my group due to wushu, felt so sad, gotta solo the public speaking project, since its one of my strength, or at least appears to be. More or less have a brief outline of what im gonna say already =D lazy to type out, perhaps tmr =D

Again, empathy...

Why is it that when a baby in the nursery cry, the other babies cry too? and for no particular reason?

It seems that we have these mirror neurons that actually allows us to put ourselves in others, to so called live vicariously through others. How interesting?

Also, it can be argued that empathy is the opposite of utopia. Puzzled? Yea, because in utopia, there are no mortality and no suffering, so is it true that we are rather 'pessimist', thus understand how cruel is the world, and thus have empathy? Like Houyhnhnms from Gulliver's travels, though everything would be perfect, everything will be based on reasons, there would not be feelings in the world anymore. It is only after Os I started to stop existing and started living, to enjoy christmas and new years, to sing with joy and acknowledgement of the season, of the period of time where doing such activities is most meaningful, just because that there's a time for everything, even the day must give way to the night, we shall have time for certain celebrations, certain cultural practices, certain holidays~!!

Interesting idea eh? Next, empathy is grounded in acknowledgement of death and celebration of life, and is based on our frailty and imperfection, yepp aka vulnerability as what I mentioned in earlier posts.

And eventually, civilization forms through empathy, that we come together and sympathize with one another, through blood ties, and religions, and national identity, and various groups, sense of belonging.... and then forms 'labels' like name of tribes or beliefs or countries or interest groups.

acknowledgement: inspirations from RSA, Gulliver's travel, song lyrics?? =D