#1 thing I hate about the internet: how easy it makes it for people to be dehumanized. How sad that this new form of communication so quickly devolved into a way to mock people (about whom we know nothing about) in ruthlessly efficient and public ways. A video goes “viral” and suddenly the person becomes a mere object for our amusement.
Do you see her “face”? Is she not deserving of dignity? What has her life been such that she came to express the things she expressed? Why did she collapse?
Where is the “humanism” in a post like this? Is the human community enhanced or harmed when you assist in the spread of videos like this or make mocking remarks about them? What does it do to your soul/character/personhood?
I hope this young woman is okay. My heart sunk when I watched her collapse.
Kleiner’s probably right here. My initial reaction is that this particular episode is probably more the unfortunate record of a girl’s mental breakdown from causes not evident than anything having to do with religious possession or proselytizing. I wish I could say that a person does not normally act like that even under the spell of religious conviction, but we know that’s not actually true either. However, by the reaction of the faculty around her, who were quite evidently shocked, something appears more organically wrong on this occasion. It’s really not something people should be mocking and ridiculing.
“Crazy Christian commencement…” was an alliteration that I couldn’t resist, but it is probably unfair to this girl. I do, however, think that what she said is crazy (especially given that it’s a graduation ceremony!).
“Where is the “humanism” in a post like this?”
There isn’t any, admittedly. My schadenfreude won out in this post. But I do think that this is too easy a criticism for you to make, because anything you or I have every said or thought is enframing, no? Though I guess some instances of enframing do more violence than others…
I didn’t consider the possibility of this being a mental breakdown. It’s certainly possible, but I rather doubt it. This kind of behavior seems straight out of the movie Jesus Camp to me—a pentecostal religious experience that seems rather typical among some fundamentalist Christians. That said, I of course hope she’s okay. I haven’t known these experiences to be dangerous, though (assuming—perhaps wrongly—that it was just a religious experience).
Well, schadenfreude isn’t the right word. I’m not amused by her prayer or her convulsions. I’m not laughing at them or anything. Like Hunt said, it’s interesting “cringe material” that I was recently reminded of because of my upcoming graduation. But yeah, it’s also pretty efficient enframing. Alas, all the best blogger fodder is.
I take it that you’re not a fan of failblog.org, Dr. Kleiner? Ha ha.
This would be tame by pentecostal standards. There’s no way from just watching it to know just what’s going on. For all we know she could be epileptic and having a seizure due to emotional stress. It almost looks like she’s having one prior to her final collapse. On the other hand, if it’s mere indulgence in a “Jesus Camp” kind of way, she deserves to be embarrassed, not because Youtube provided fodder for public mockery, but because she would have royally screwed up a lot of peoples’ commencement.
Look, I did not mean to sound holier than thou here. It is not like I’ve never laughed at someone else’s expense. I’m not particularly proud of that, but of course it is true. A friend of mine always sends me fail blog stuff which is sometimes funny. But most of it is more akin to stupid human tricks (ha ha, that guy racked himself trying to do some absurd skateboard trick) than it is laughing at someone else’s heartfelt and sincere (no matter how absurd you may think the content) expression. I don’t really understand the pentecostal religious experience bit, but I don’t deny that sometimes this expressions are sincere.
The reason I presumed it was a mental/medical issue: they did ask for an ambulance.
Yes, it is almost impossible to not “enframe” others, depending on how strictly one takes this Heideggerian bit. But, as you know, I don’t sign on to the most extreme expressions of this critique (Derrida’s claim that every speech act is an act of violence). A rule of thumb to follow (not that I always succeed in doing so): take on ideas, not persons (love the sinner, hate the sin). Socrates loves his interlocutors, but that does not mean he is easy on them. Correcting error is an act of charity, so it would be wrong to not correct in some cases. This just looked like a pretty clear-cut case of not trying to build this person up (or anyone else for that matter). It is sadly an all too common internet phenomena.
Plenty of other truly humanist issues to deal with right now – the imminent firing squad execution in Utah and the truly offensive new AZ immigration law.
Coincidentally, Pope Benedict spoke yesterday at a conference on modern means of communication and remarked on the need to humanize (“give a soul to”) the internet.
‘Thus said the Pope we see, a “spiritual pollution” that brings us to no longer “look one another in the face”. So we must “overcome those collective dynamics that risk reducing people to “soulless bodies, objects of exchange and consumption”. The media must become a “humanizing factor”, focused “on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples”. Only then, will “the epochal times we are experiencing be rich and fertile in new opportunities”‘
What do you mean? Danny Glover is great, but isn’t he getting too old for that shit?
As for the girl: cringe material.
Someone receiving a degree saying “I’m sorry that we’ve embraced the intellectual mind” is just funny.
#1 thing I hate about the internet: how easy it makes it for people to be dehumanized. How sad that this new form of communication so quickly devolved into a way to mock people (about whom we know nothing about) in ruthlessly efficient and public ways. A video goes “viral” and suddenly the person becomes a mere object for our amusement.
Do you see her “face”? Is she not deserving of dignity? What has her life been such that she came to express the things she expressed? Why did she collapse?
Where is the “humanism” in a post like this? Is the human community enhanced or harmed when you assist in the spread of videos like this or make mocking remarks about them? What does it do to your soul/character/personhood?
I hope this young woman is okay. My heart sunk when I watched her collapse.
Kleiner’s probably right here. My initial reaction is that this particular episode is probably more the unfortunate record of a girl’s mental breakdown from causes not evident than anything having to do with religious possession or proselytizing. I wish I could say that a person does not normally act like that even under the spell of religious conviction, but we know that’s not actually true either. However, by the reaction of the faculty around her, who were quite evidently shocked, something appears more organically wrong on this occasion. It’s really not something people should be mocking and ridiculing.
“Crazy Christian commencement…” was an alliteration that I couldn’t resist, but it is probably unfair to this girl. I do, however, think that what she said is crazy (especially given that it’s a graduation ceremony!).
“Where is the “humanism” in a post like this?”
There isn’t any, admittedly. My schadenfreude won out in this post. But I do think that this is too easy a criticism for you to make, because anything you or I have every said or thought is enframing, no? Though I guess some instances of enframing do more violence than others…
I didn’t consider the possibility of this being a mental breakdown. It’s certainly possible, but I rather doubt it. This kind of behavior seems straight out of the movie Jesus Camp to me—a pentecostal religious experience that seems rather typical among some fundamentalist Christians. That said, I of course hope she’s okay. I haven’t known these experiences to be dangerous, though (assuming—perhaps wrongly—that it was just a religious experience).
Well, schadenfreude isn’t the right word. I’m not amused by her prayer or her convulsions. I’m not laughing at them or anything. Like Hunt said, it’s interesting “cringe material” that I was recently reminded of because of my upcoming graduation. But yeah, it’s also pretty efficient enframing. Alas, all the best blogger fodder is.
I take it that you’re not a fan of failblog.org, Dr. Kleiner? Ha ha.
This would be tame by pentecostal standards. There’s no way from just watching it to know just what’s going on. For all we know she could be epileptic and having a seizure due to emotional stress. It almost looks like she’s having one prior to her final collapse. On the other hand, if it’s mere indulgence in a “Jesus Camp” kind of way, she deserves to be embarrassed, not because Youtube provided fodder for public mockery, but because she would have royally screwed up a lot of peoples’ commencement.
Look, I did not mean to sound holier than thou here. It is not like I’ve never laughed at someone else’s expense. I’m not particularly proud of that, but of course it is true. A friend of mine always sends me fail blog stuff which is sometimes funny. But most of it is more akin to stupid human tricks (ha ha, that guy racked himself trying to do some absurd skateboard trick) than it is laughing at someone else’s heartfelt and sincere (no matter how absurd you may think the content) expression. I don’t really understand the pentecostal religious experience bit, but I don’t deny that sometimes this expressions are sincere.
The reason I presumed it was a mental/medical issue: they did ask for an ambulance.
Yes, it is almost impossible to not “enframe” others, depending on how strictly one takes this Heideggerian bit. But, as you know, I don’t sign on to the most extreme expressions of this critique (Derrida’s claim that every speech act is an act of violence). A rule of thumb to follow (not that I always succeed in doing so): take on ideas, not persons (love the sinner, hate the sin). Socrates loves his interlocutors, but that does not mean he is easy on them. Correcting error is an act of charity, so it would be wrong to not correct in some cases. This just looked like a pretty clear-cut case of not trying to build this person up (or anyone else for that matter). It is sadly an all too common internet phenomena.
Plenty of other truly humanist issues to deal with right now – the imminent firing squad execution in Utah and the truly offensive new AZ immigration law.
Coincidentally, Pope Benedict spoke yesterday at a conference on modern means of communication and remarked on the need to humanize (“give a soul to”) the internet.
‘Thus said the Pope we see, a “spiritual pollution” that brings us to no longer “look one another in the face”. So we must “overcome those collective dynamics that risk reducing people to “soulless bodies, objects of exchange and consumption”. The media must become a “humanizing factor”, focused “on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples”. Only then, will “the epochal times we are experiencing be rich and fertile in new opportunities”‘
Read more and hear his remarks here: http://www.radiovaticana.org/EN1/Articolo.asp?c=374892
I lol’d.