Muffled Transmission from the Center
I suppose that all goes back to Stoicism and, yes, on an individual level that can be cultivated. That's part of what's involved in virtual or potential disciplinary space. It's a matter of controlling attention and if one can't do that, nothing else will matter much.
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Yes, and this involves analyzing your emotions (which must be a prerequisite to controlling them); with regard to something like mourning, as well, traditions often function as transitions to living without the person, and how they enable that ca be studied as well. Part of the emotion involves obligations to that person (or obligations they had to you) and this can all be sorted out as well.
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Yes, all the emotions derive from our position on some season, real or imagined (always more or less imagined). Anger derives from revenge, which is still rather difficult to set aside without simply channeling it into symptoms, anxiety registers a field of only partially known possibilities, which one can then sort out into the knowable and unknowable, actionable ad unactionable, etc. Representing larger scenes than the one generating the emotions is likely to be helpful in many cases--the person who made you angry was himself cheated by someone else, your anxieties can be reduced by engaging new technologies and social forms and seeing what you can know about them, etc. The center is no longer something everyone gets their own limited piece of but a new mode of reciprocity, like converting anger into firmness that doesn't seek payback.
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Very good and helpful analysis, thanks. One always has some authority to bring to bear, i.e.e, it's always possible in some respect to occupy the center, and one should find the best way to do so.
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Yes, it's a question of putting something at the center that can be revered and shared rather than attacked and torn apart. That's already implicit in joint attention, while compelting joint attention.
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I haven't thought about it all. I'm not planning to participate.
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Yes, of course.