empathy
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On consent (again).
To feel free to fully find ourselves, we all need to be respected as autonomous individuals.
adrienne maree brown, affirmative consent, ask first, assault, autonomy, communication, communication during sex, consent, consent culture, consent is mandatory, Consent is sexy, dishonesty, empathy, feminism, feminist, filter bubble, filter bubbles, honesty, Is That Still Consent?, Jenny Kleeman, Katherine Angel, learning, lying, maybe, Melissa Febos, miscommunication, physiological response to pornography, Pleasure Activism, psychological harm, rape, respect, Roseanna Sommers, seduction, self-discovery, self-knowledge, sex, sex research, Sex Robots and Vegan Meat, sexual assault, sexual norms, sexuality, technology, tentative, the joy of learning, tomorrow sex will be good again, unwanted touch, what's wrong with the phrase consent is sexy, women's response to pornography, You Were Duped Into Saying Yes
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On empathy and the color red.
We can care about others’ lives even if we’re not entirely certain how those lives feel.
AI, Ai poet, Americanah, animal cognition, animal consciousness, animal perception, anti-racist, bat, bat perception, bats, bee vision, Being a Beast, building empathy, Charles Foster, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, cognition, color perception, color red, color vision, dismantling racism, empathy, evolution of vision, frog vision, imagination, infrared vision, IR vision, literature, Nagel, non-human animal cognition, persona poem, persona poetry, philosophy, poet Ai, Racial oppression, racism, red, Robert Jackson Bennett, Shorefall, theory of mind, Thomas Nagel, ultraviolet vision, UV vision, vision, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, what red means, why we see color, why we see red
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On octopus art.
We humans make art for humans, but octopuses might make art for others.
Andy Warhol, animal art, animal cognition, animal theory of mind, art, art criticism, art theory, audience, Baphomet, board games, do animals make art, elephant art, elephant painting, emotional intelligence, empathy, evolution of brains, evolution of cognition, evolution of intelligence, free will, function of art, gossip, how does consciousness work, narrative explanation, non-human animal cognition, non-human animals, octopus art, octopus brains, octopus literature, octopus theory of mind, poetry, purpose of art, Satan, The Optic Wraith, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, theory of mind, timing of consciousness, what counts as art, what is art, what qualifies as art, why do we make art, why is art beautiful, Will Alexander
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On empathy.
To write from another’s perspective, an author must empathize deeply with that character. And we need that sort of empathy to help us change the world.
authorial distance, autism, autism spectrum disorder, corrections, empathizing with characters, empathy, In Defense of Cultural Appropriation, incarceration, jail, jail poetry, juvenile delinquents, juvenile detention, Kenan Malik, Lost in Place, Lying Awake, Mark Salzman, mass incarceration, novelists, prison, school to prison pipeline, teaching creative writing, teaching in a corrections center, teaching in jail, teaching poetry, The Curious Indicent of the Dog in the Night Time, The Reason I Jump, True Notebooks, writing practice
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On empathizing with machines.
With sufficient power to pursue its goals, an AI might destroy the world. But then, we’d probably do it too.
AI, algorithm, apocalypse, artificial intelligence, Burt Helm, computer games, decision-making, empathy, end of the world, ethics, Facebook, Facebook advertising, Facebook algorithm, Frank Lantz, goals, GPS, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, Guantánamo, machines, money, morality, neural networks, paperclips, philosophy, the algorithm, tools
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On Charles Foster’s ‘Being a Beast’ and battling the empathy gap.
If Charles Foster can learn, & care, what it’s like to be a badger, all citizens should be able to empathize with the experience of Homo sapiens from other ethnic backgrounds.
agricultural revolution, all lives matter, Being a Beast, Black Lives Matter, brains, Charles Foster, civil forfieture, common ancestors, Donald Trump, empathy, empathy gap, evolution, family first, faulty roadside drug tests, Hungary, incarceration crisis, injustice, Jeneen Interlandi, jeremy betham, John Oliver, living as a badger, natural selection, Neil Gaiman, neurological basis of empathy, Peter Singer, power racing, psychology, reading fiction develops empathy, river otters, Roma, swift, The View from the Cheap Seats, tofu, utilitarianism, vegan, vegetarian
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On Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian.’
Plants photosynthesize. Humans kill to eat. But I still think humans are pretty great.
anorexia, Being a Beast, biology isn’t destiny, bulimia, Charles Foster, chlorophyll habit, empathy, ethical eating, ethics of eating, Fiona Apple, Han Kang, humans evolved to be omnivorous, Naomi Wolf, Paper Bag, Queer, Rat Park, Stuart McMillen, The Beauty Myth, The Vegetarian, turning into a plant, vegan, veganism, why are more women than men vegetarian, William Burroughs, Yi Sang -
On Gerry Alanguilan’s “ELMER,” his author bio, and animal cognition.
In ELMER by Gary Alanguilan, chickens suddenly gain intelligence and have to fight against murder, oppression, and prejudice.
abortion rights, Andy Hartzell, animal cognition, chicken, David Duchovny, ELMER, empathy, ethics, evolution, Fox Bunny Funny, Frans de Waal, Gerry Alanguilan, graphic novel, Holy Cow, Homo naledi, live your ethics, Peter Singer, speciest, suffering, teleological misconception, teleology, vegan, vegetarian
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On racism and the empathy gap (while sneakily building toward the idea that teaching kids to root for your favorite sports team might be kinda evil).
There is an unfortunately compelling evolutionary model to explain why humans are so predisposed to racism. The rotten treatment of presumed outsiders may well be a corollary of our genetic inducements toward altruism. Which is grimly ironic, the idea that the same evolutionary narrative could explain both the best & worst sides of human nature. In…
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On perspective, and whether you, Dear Reader, are a chameleon.
One major difficulty for me, in writing my book, was trying to inhabit perspectives that, due to an unfortunate spate of research reading, I don’t really sympathize with. But I had to learn to do it — and do it with the understanding that almost everyone, within the context of their view of the world, is trying to…
Frank Brown Cloud 