The cities that we build

The other day, a friend and I were discussing human perceptions of the world. We settled on the idea that each of us build cities in our minds. The cities that we build exist as a result of our experiences, our memories, our admiration for our mentors, our perceptions of ourselves, and much more. Essentially, our cities are reflective of the world as we each see it, as well as how we see ourselves within that world.

Cities, however, are not stagnant. With the development of new technology, the immigration and emigration of residents, changing media values, growing personal values, and the occasional and unexpected storm or natural disaster, our cities are constantly having to be repaired, renewed, and revised to suit our needs and the needs of the rest of the world. An issue therefore arises when we, as the architects and engineers of our minds, fail to allow our cities to grow and change as they must. Inflexibility is a serious issue; in many cases, inflexibility goes hand in hand with brittleness and fragility. The collapse of our minds' cities is not an easy task to bear.

Objectiveness and Emotional Investments

I'm currently reading Shakespeare's masterpiece King Lear and have been thinking about how emotional responses to characters and empathy with characters can often cloud our argumentative judgement. If we're trying, for example, to analyze the character Cordelia, it is difficult to remain objective if we have emotionally invested ourselves in liking her character. Such is especially the case when viewing a well-acted and well-made film interpretation of the play, such as the PBS Great Performances series of King Lear directed by the talented Trevor Nunn (which can be watched at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/tag/trevor-nunn/). We are often moved to empathize with all of the characters in the play; the relationship between the Fool and Lear makes our hearts wrench, and some sympathy can even be felt for Lear's antagonistic eldest daughter, Gonoril.

The same can be said for life outside of literature. Our ability to empathize with the people around us is what makes us more kind, more compassionate, and more human. Empathy is often the basis of philanthropy. However, empathy is also often the basis for bias. How can we objectively analyze a situation, a person, or ourselves if we have become emotionally invested in a certain viewpoint or perspective?