The
furious behavior of one man towards another is seen every day throughout the
world. It has become part of our
society and person to fight and disagree with other humans. Ever since the first people existed
until the end of our civilization there was and will be fights between
men.
In
general, spectators and people unacquainted to the passions of the “Furious
Man” will take the side of the other man in danger. Without even knowing the cause of the situation the “Furious
Man” looks as if he is a villain to the outside world. Smith says in paragraph 7 of his
reading, “We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and
are immediately disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to
be in so much danger.” As I have seen this through my life, I couldn’t agree
more with how people, in general, will take the man’s side who is in
danger. However, this is not
always the appropriate choice to make. For example, one day I remember clearly,
I was at the baseball field and witnessed a couple coaches of mine throwing a
man to the ground and start to hurt him.
The parents jumped up and the initial reaction was to take the hurting
mans side and stop the coaches.
What the spectators didn’t know is that this man had a gun with bad intentions
and the coaches stopped something that could have been a tragedy.
I
believe it is morally right and our nature to stop violence and help anyone who
is being hurt even if we don’t know the details. However man needs to take into
account the provocation of the argument and realize the passion of the “Furious
Man”.
I agree. This is a very interesting aspect of human nature. What interests me the most is that everyone does it, and they do not even realize they are doing it most of the time. This was a very interesting and true observation by Smith and a good follow up by you to take it out of his 18th century wording.
ReplyDeleteI really agree with this and like what you did here because even though I might have glanced over this topic a few times I never really stopped to take into account what it was saying or what it really meant. Even though this idea was written by Smith in the 18th century it is really cool to see how relevant it is today since a lot of the stuff that was written in the 18th century is either outdated or no longer relevant in todays time.
ReplyDeleteSmith was definitely on to something, and I think it shows a tension between a certain type of empathy and a different one. One is more immediate, another is slower and requires more intellectual processing. I think a related phenomenon might be an inability to forgive people later exonerated of a crime. I've heard cases where someone is cleared of all wrongdoing by unimpeachable evidence like DNA, and the victims have developed so much hatred that they cannot bring themselves to believe the person is not guilty.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, someone else wrote about this same topic in another class, and their example was also a fight that broke out between adults at a youth sporting event. I wonder why sports seems to evoke this tension?
Reece, I'm shocked that you think anything could possibly be irrelevant about the 18th century! It's like discovering gambling in Casablanca (another old reference--Google it). But seriously, these parallels are out there--we just need to find them! I hope we can continue to find them.
I couldn't agree more with your blog. I was involved in a very similar situation and the same reaction occurred between the spectators and bystanders. I believe with Smith completely on how sympathy can be shown for the wrong person in a given situation. Through both my story and yours, it seems to be that the more aggressive and angry man always has sympathy shown for his enemy and against himself.
ReplyDeleteJohn, looks like you discovered some of the other classes's blogs. I thought it was interesting too that you both had such similar experiences. I wonder why it is that sports seems to lead to this type of situation. Is it just that sports can lead to conflicts, and that conflicts lend themselves to this type of misinterpretation?
ReplyDelete