Anger vs Empathy

Sebastian Junger in reminiscing his friend Tim Hetherington said something, I forget what, that reminded me: for most  traumatic experiences, anger is reserved for the self and empathy for others.It never occurs to the truly stressed out self that pitying oneself is a possibility. That's a luxury only the armchair can afford. Either for others or oneself in the third person.

Maybe Zoloft is the physiological equivalent of shifting narrative person-hood.

Othering Happy

John Gray, in his latest book The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths, quotes the German journalist Sebastian Haffner's account of society in Germany being comraded into happiness. A sort of environment where the not so active hater of the other still partakes in the happiness generated in the haters' non-hating activity. This must be true; for another author, Romesh Gunasekera, in a completely different context describes a happiness and preoccupation quite similar. And, with a war that's impending.

One is tempted to draw parallel to the Hindu right wing echo chamber of relatively strange people on Twitter who seem to enjoy othering Muslims.