“The main problem with empathy is that it works like a spotlight, highlighting certain people in the here and now, making their suffering salient to you. This can sometimes be a good thing. Indeed, one of the best arguments in favour of empathy is that it really does make you kinder to the person you are empathising with. This is backed by laboratory research, by everyday experience and by common sense.
So if the world were a simple place, where the only difficulties one had to deal with involved a single person in some sort of immediate distress, and where helping that person had positive effects, the case for empathy would be solid.
But the world is not a simple place. One problem is that empathy is innumerate, favouring the one over the many. In one classic series of studies, psychologists asked some subjects how much money they would give to help develop a drug that would save the life of one child and asked others how much they would give to save eight children. People would give roughly the same in both cases. But when a third group of subjects was told the child’s name and shown her picture, the donations shot up – now there were greater donations to the one than to the eight. All of these laboratory effects can be seen as manifestations of what has been called “the identifiable victim effect”.”
Because of the shortage of money in the health service my doctor has referred me to a refurbished cardiologist.
Really want to refurbish my heart because I love people.
I could have a factory reset that would be delightful although which have my learnt skills would I be able to download back after doing the resetand after all all a refurbished heart is still a heart not voice box.
I would like my house to be refurbished so it looks like it did when it was first built and and it was decorated inheritors of that era.
Great Bardfield and Dunmow by meadows of blue
Linseed and poppies delight
Narrow lanes curving are leading us to
The Essex of Constable ‘s sight
At Manningtree swans jostle near the stone edge
I recall we have seen them in flight
Like a god might descend to fulfill an old pledge;
A humbling and marvellous sight.
In Dedham, all’s still and wisteria hangs
From a house with the door painted white.
The church was quite empty and no bell was rung
But a prayer could ascend to its height.
After the quiet of the village out here
The A12 was revealed as a blight
We crossed it then turned down a lane that was near
We drove home in the cool of the night.
Windmills not turning and churches not used
Yet a beauty to charm and delight
No mills as in Yorkshire,no hills to denude.
Long Melford and Eleigh ,oh wait!
Autumn time in Essex where we drove When farmers burned the stubble of the corn The earth itself was fiery like young love The smokey air rose like a cloud new born
The Kentish landlocked cliffs are wide and steep The farmers grow their grain on land beneath And there too we have seen the holy fire The flames and smoke arrest me with desire
The earth and soil, the harvest we find there Give me joy both full of wheat or bare Why did burning stubble make me glow? These images affect the heart’s deep core
Now fires are banned., they damage our pure air And I did not like the murder of the hare
I remember riding in that car
Through unknown Essex.Suffolk to the sea
Oh Aldeburgh,Dunswich, where we were
The fields invited love with yellow stars
Beguiling buttercups, and you and me We got lost in Braintree in our car
Framlingham, we saw wild primrose there
Mary Tudor unimagined flees. Ah, Aldeburgh, fishing boats and tar
History so poignant and bizarre
Bloody Mary’s heretics, the siege They might have got away inside our car
Southwold Harbour, walking on the spur
Rowed acrosss the tidal river clear Then Walberswick where Freud’s descendents smirk
As death came down was I the wife you chose
Your pretty one with cheeks of peach and rose? My Wedding Dress , my eyes, my shining hair Your flowered shirt, your eyes , your humour rare
Irony is a term for a figure of speech.[1] Irony is when something happens that is opposite from what is expected. It can often be funny, but it is also used in tragedies. There are many types of irony, including those listed below:
Socratic irony, when someone (usually a teacher) pretends to be stupid in order to show how stupid his pupils are (while at the same time the reader or audience understand the situation).
Cosmic irony, when something that everyone thinks will happen actually happens very differently.
Situational irony e.g. Mr. Smith gets a parking ticket. This is ironic because Mr. Smith is a traffic warden.
Verbal irony is an absence of expression and intention. Sarcasm may sometimes involve verbal irony.
Irony of fate is the misfortune in the result of fate or chance.
The difference between of things seem to be or reality.
In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet takes a potion that will put her to sleep, making her look dead. She does this in the hopes of being reunited with Romeo. He incorrectly learns of her death, and kills himself. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the reader/viewer knows she is not dead, but Romeo does not.
A common example of cosmic irony could be that a child wants some kind of pudding, and misbehaves to try to get it. The parent withholds it because of the child’s behavior.
Verbal irony can be found in sarcasm, but not just that.
In Sophocles‘ play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus acts out based on the knowledge of his fate which in turn leads to the fulfillment of the tragic fate. This is an example of how fate plays on irony.
Try writing nonsense, you will be surprised I have used a comma, that’s the end; How hard it is to know a poet can lie.
Unless you have a calling,shut your eyes Do not break where you can also bend Try writing nonsense, you be surprised
When I read a villanelle, men cry. Ask the poet never to 1pretend For cruel it is to find a poet who lies
Triolets bear sadness to the wise If your aim is cruel, do not send In learning nonsense, we’ve been ill advised
Rubbish is not nonsense,realise. Lewis Carroll’s Alice was no friend How hard it is to know where poets lie.
Sense and nonsense travel in a blend So it is that fiction can offend When writing nonsense, you must be composed How hard is it to learn a poem transposed?
When I was 28 my husband bought me a tin of lavender wax polish for my birthday.
After 45 years of marriage I found he liked me mainly because of my beauty ‘[?]
When I was recovering from a serious operation ,he said,You are not very house proud, are you?
When he was near death he slept a lot in an armchair by my side.One afternoon he woke up and said in a very loud voice:
You’ve got a brilliant personality.
Then he went to sleep again.
When we were first married we were out in the country.We were in a lane with steep grassy banks so we lay down at the top and rolled down!
He rarely noticed if I went to the hairdresser until I had it cut very very short.He was annoyed because when it was long he liked to brush it in the evening.He could have tickled me with a feather duster instead but he refused.I didn’t have a feather duster but I am sure I could have bought one.
He used to bring me a cup of tea in bed until he could hardly walk.
After I had an eye operation I had no glasses for 6 months and for 3 months I had gas in my right eye so it was blind.We were in the car, approaching a junction and he said,Which way do I turn? I said,talk about the blind leading the blind
Just after that a friend rang up and said she was very upset she had to wear glasses.How horrible it was.I couldn’t see. even with glasses.It made me learn how self centred we are much of the time.
My husband was very humorous.He could imitate politicians so maybe it’s a good thing he has gone.He would not have believed the last 3 years in the world.
.
Well,I was on the bus and it was very full.so I said to this man, could I have your seat?
So he says,No,you are equal now so you have to stand
So I said,My knees are killing me
So he sez,See the doctor!
So I said,I’ve got my husband here.
Where? he asked
He’s in this bag here,I told .
He looked a bit puzzled so I said. it’s his ashes actually.
So he said,All right you can sit down.
I said.Don’t bother,grace will aid me.
Who’s Grace,he said looking round.
I mean God’s grace,I told him.
If you ask me,God’s a bloody disgrace.he replied.
I said,please watch your words as it may disturb my husband.
He said,Surely he can’t hear me now,can he?
I said,No the waves of sound might rattle him.
He said,Rattle!He’s not a skeleton,is he?
No,I was using it to mean upset or disturb in a poetical sense
My.my he said.Who are you,Mrs Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein never married,I informed him.Nor did he write poetry though the Tractatus does have a stern beauty
What a shame,he said.You’d make someone a lovely wife.
Is that a proposal,I asked him humorously.
It doesn’t seem right when you have your husband’s ashes on your knee.
Too true.I fancied having a quiet time on my own with no men around.
So you don’t want passionate bodily love? he asked.
I might want it but I have no desire to wash underpants and boil hankies any more.How that ever got linked to passionate love,God only knows,I murmured seductively
No, he doesn’t because he has no nose! he informed me quietly
Wow,I never knew that, I lied despondently.
Excuse me,can I get off? he enquired gently
Not on me,thank you,I answered with a cunning smile
You are so vulgar,he noted journalistically.
Thank you.I’ve been training for a year or two.I told him wisely, with a shy laugh.
Why,can you have lessons?He asked quite jocosely
Just watch some soaps on TV….I offered unevenly
I prefer gardening,he replied regretfully
You can prune my bush tonight if you like,I reminded him perversely
I say,that’s a bit off! he said wistfully
The ashes have gone to my head.I said in desperation.
I say,shall I take you home? he offered gallantly
I have no home,I responded poignantly.My lover broke a window over my head after my husband took ill.
That’s odd.
Even for a man, I told him numerically.
He should have been glad,he replied sensately.
No, he was afraid of commitment, I informed him furiously.
How would breaking the window help? he asked curiously
It would give him a way to escape from me.I chattered obviously
My goodness,we are at the terminus.We’ll have to get another bus back to our stops.He said anxiously.
Just then we saw some police approaching.
Excuse me madam, Are you Muslim?
No.I always wear cotton in hot weather.Unless I am making cheese.
Sorry. he said.How do you worship?
I think you need a Rabbi.
So you are Jewish?
No.you are.
How do you know,he said.
As you have a big hat on like Leonard Cohen ~I deduced you were another of those Cohens.They are all descended from Aaron,you know.There must be a few hundred of you.
I fear you have made a logical error,madam.
As long as I don’t make an error of the heart,I don’t bother about logic.I said informatively
Surely we need both a heart and a head ,he asked me questioningly.
Definitely,but why are you here? I demanded.
That’s what God said to Elijah on the mountain.
And what did Elijah say,I enquired.
I heard you calling me.
After 12 years of conservative government we have 14 houses have burnt down spontaneously in London
A lot of domestic cats have died in these fires.
How did Boris Johnson manage to start these fires?
One possibility he is in league with Satan and that can be very dangerous. It might be worse for Satan to fight with jealous Boris Johnson
As We know hell is full of fires
These are the fires of hatred and malice and perhaps envy.
Is there really so much malice in London now to make 15 houses burn down spontaneously?
There is certainly a lot of fear and it doesn’t make take much to turn fear into to hatred of those who might be against us including our own family
It’s hard hating your own family so it’s easier to do a displacement and hurt some group of people that you’re not familiar with personally but may seem possible possible sources of harm.
probably completely innocent people but don’t let that stop you from hurting them
Your enemies are inside your own head so no matter how much you hurt other groups of people in our society you will not feel better
The Queen Mary did not feel better after she executed Lady Jane Grey
It seems not enough to stop her
from executing other people from different religious backgrounds
Her idea of God was that everyone who did not become a Catholic would burn in hell.
Her sister Queen Elizabeth had the opposite view.
However you choose the group that’s going to burn in hell it’s bizarre concept of God
And it just not correspond to any of Jesus teachings as we know them in the New Testament.
Why would you hate someone so much that you want them to burn not just to burn to death but to burn forever and ever?
The Pilchards.23,Sweetnames AvenueKnittinghamNear Nottingham.England
Dear Jane
Hope you are keeping well in this unusually cold spring weather.Stan has had flu.It made him so bad tempered and waspishthat I took up the Duraglit polish and got him to polish all the brass,except the front door knob, as that doesn’t come off.Mind you,it made the bedroom smell odd… a mistake,perhaps…so I sprinkled lavender oil around.He seems to get thinner and I seem to get fatter.So our average w eight remains constant.What a relief.I’d like to be weighed as a married woman.Can you believe this..I’ve got chilblains! It’s those dratted blood vessels of mine.Still,I polished some old plum colored leather and wear them in the house.We seem to be doing polishing frequently here.. boots,furniture,apples.How is your new book “Nonsense:A.N.Whitehead and Lewis Carroll” coming on?Hope it’s progressing….to a nonsensical ending.I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out in April[from Polar bears publishers]It’s called,”An unpolished performance.”My fourth book on Wittgenstein’s cats is almost finished.And the publishers can’t wait for the photographs…I’ll get a friend to do those for me!!It gives me a change from all that polishing.I’ve begun to talk to myself out loud…. in the street.Just seeing if I can still do my old Lancashire accent.I suppose it might worry people but no one has said anything as yet.They may be afraid.”That which is unsaid can,nevertheless,still be heard.Stan is still involved romantically with Anne, our next door neighbor.I can’t blame him as chilblains and Wittgenstein not very romantic.When I think of how we used to be,it makes me smile and feel sadness too.I wonder if I can find someone new for a romance,myself… someone with Asperger’s syndromepossibly…as I’ve just been diagnosed.It’s quite common in mathematicians.It may be anadvantage in concentrating a lotI need a boyfriend with weak eyes as my clothes are all full of moth holesand I’m damned if I’m going to buy new ones.I can’t see well enough to darn but I’ve sewn the holes up neatly thusgiving a strange pleated effect to my clothes.On my merino wool knitted trousers, one hole was right on the ass.It looks now as if I’ve been shot in the rear…but I can’t see it.So it does not exist.Sometimes in the past I would iron on those motifs likebutterflies…butI think it would look odd having a butterfly just there…. or indeedanything else like wild rose.I could make a little sign saying”Keep clear,from my rear.This is a hole where a moth scored a goal.”Still,not many people are going to look there now I hope….I seem to have stopped knitting but am still drawing.Meantime I’ve just ironed some of my winter clothes as it’s still chilly..and am planning to iron all my pink and blue knickers nowas I believe it kills any germs left when you wash at 30 deg.I got those colours in case I shouldchange sex or is it gender?I wonder if I should iron the sheets?Could I do it while they are on the bed?I don’t wash them much as it wears them out and me too.I am going to take up baking again because Stan is getting so thin.I fancy a Russian cheesecake as it had a lot of protein in it.I have a genuine Russian cookbook and also am waiting for a delivery of aJewish cookery book as I have lost mine..no it fell down onto my head last week.God only knows where that came from.but I believe there were good cheesecakes as Jewish cooking has much incommon with Russian,perhaps because once many Jews lived in Russia.I justmade friends with one here….he is charming and like me he hates golf.I have got almost all the Penguin cookery books ever printed but mislaid afew.In fact it’s quite hard to get into the kitchenwith all these books on the shelves.And a little food.I was comforted to read that the parent’s of John Burra,the artist,had books piled every where in their large house….and he was very untidy too.So all I need is talent and practice and I’ll be an artist.After all,anyone can be untidy but not everyone will practice their Art.I’d like to practice the arts of love.They say you should love your neighbor as yourself,but personally I prefer the neighbor or even the milkman to myself.Meanwhile I’m happy with Emile our catand my 500 photos of Wittgenstein.I shall make Stan a lemon sponge pudding.That is the love he wants…Food.”If music be the food of love I’ll cohabit with a pure white dove. And while he coos and sings for me. I’ll try not to :fall out of the tree, Get stung by a bee, Have psychotherapy Make more enemies, Let my thought free, Hurt my knee. Let moths frighten me.Well,time for some tea.Now Jane, please write to me soon.I love to see your so strangely beautiful handwritingand to hear about Whitehead and Cambridge and all the weird dons.I hope it’s not too damp and cold there near that river.Keep warm and make a note of any intriguing happenings to relate to me.And anything beautiful you can see or hear.I hope Edward is writingregularly..where is he doing his research now… did you say Stanford?Maybe you should install Skype..then again,perhaps not as you would have towash your hair too much… and comb it too…perhaps we could wear wigs.Do write soon,Love always,Mary.
I wish I were an apple I wish I were an apple and you were eating me I’d like to make you happy As you sat by this tree. I wish I were a blackbird So I could sing for you. I’d like to make you cheerful And stop you feeling blue. I wish I were the sun So I cold warm your frozen heart. And then your heart would melt for me And you would be less tart. I wish I were the moon so I could protect you all night long. But being only me may I Present you with this song?Why 1.Why is denim now a sign of conformity not rebellion? 2.Where are the best jeans from? 3.Should you wear “double denim”? 4. Why is denim too hot for summer and too cold for winter and yet we wear it anyway? 5.Why don’t most people wear winter coats nowadays? 6.Why are the shops so hot they make one feel sick 7.How shopping makes me feel sick and other ways of saving money. 8.Why did the Russians have the best novelists? 9.Is 8. true? 10.Is life worthwhile? 11.What does 10.mean 12.Who can come up with the best ideas for small talk? 13.Food processors…are they a good thing to own? 14.Did you see the second version of Dr Zhivago? 15.Why is Russian Orthodox liturgy so moving? 16.Have you been to Walsingham? 17.Do you like day trips on a coach? 18.Why is fish and chips our national dish. 19.Why is roast beef our national dish. 20.Do other nations have fish and chips? 21 Is rapeseed oil any use for chip frying? 22.What an odd name rapeseed is. 23.Did Einstein eat chips? 24.Is your skin sensitive? 25.Why do women wear deodorants but men don’t usually bother? 25.Do you need suncream in the winter? 26.How many grains of sand are there on Brighton beach? 27.Why is the sea at Hythe sometimes teal 28.Why are the Saxon cliffs in Kent a mile from the sea? 29.Can the Kent authorities move the cliffs back near the sea again. 30 Isn’t it odd that the railway line runs at the bottom of the cliffs near Folkstone as the tide might come up as a train goes by? 31,Is this small talk?
Yoo No,a blot of fiowk here dislake the MsLim women wearing a veil over there fices..But luuk at it this woy.. will they get skin cancer? Don’t detention thet to me after 23 injections in my voice. Do they worry about ben hur days?Does chemotheropy make other English fowk even sodder as we cen all cee they are bald? You sea,it’s quote sansible, reelly… trust schemes a bit eerie tolking to someone who’s teeth are hidden.,Still it waves on lipstacks and lip glossies and other expansive items of make it all up. So look out for my new Elfie…after I go somewear were they sell these torments for women. I just wish English women wore a dense veil over their orifices.
Keep them privet like our Ann sisters did unless Ann Boleyn.
After days of record-breaking rows in every street in London the government have decided to throw a bucket of cold water over the entire conurbation
Unfortunately the government are very stupid and do not believe a report from Imperial college that one bucket of cold water will not be enough to wet everybody living in London and its suburbs.
The government are in fact very angry with Imperial college and have decided to make a 50% cut in its research allowance for the next financial year starting 2 months ago.
Whether that should be called the next financial year is open to debate but we know what Virus Johnson did in Oxford
And that was much worse than throwing cold water on people
Suggestions that wish for a bucket of champagne over London are made by men not realising that’ the amount of liquid in a bucket does not alter when it’s filled with water or when it is champagne or indeed when it is the urine of thousands of homeless people or babies a bucket is a bucket is a bucket in olde England
Normally a bucket of cold water is a metaphor but who knows?
0 thank you for the watch from Switzerland unfortunately after 50 years has broken can you please send me another one I will send you my new address separately
If you have remarried please do not burden your wife with any stories about me you know quite well that you are far too introverted to be married to someone like myself and I’ll give you a favour very unsociable that is by studying classics every night in bed
00000 the bed with 30 small we should have got a king size one
My it’s so easy to know what one should have done 40 years too late and it’s quite possible that you’ve been extremely happy with a young woman extroverts and lively disposition dummy
0 please don’t worry because you must be over 8 to buy now
Do you think of Google voice dictation
04 is it any good inferring human happiness from a phone even if it is a large roll
I have published 32 books under my own of poetry I do not use your surname anymore in fact I forgot what it is but luckily I still have your email address so I can write to you even though I don’t know who you are does it matter my letters to people practising my English and getting ideas and sometimes the letter itself turns into a phone so I can just publish it straight away without doing anything else to it isn’t it wonderful
0000 but Anna Anna freezes up was so much poetry being written
It is not the most popular kind of book I need to move into soft romantic fiction or cruel horrible thrillers incorporating sexual assault and murder I don’t think I’m going to do that 0 I will have to write something gentle but in this world do you think there’s any point
0 was there any point in the reign of Henry VIII
Get many books have been written about him combining murder sex violence passion and possibly possibly love what did Henry VII my love
0 I don’t know if any historians would have research that did love just mean desire for a beautiful woman who will give you children feel a strong desire or did it mean that you will care about them my as you care about yourself well I don’t think so not you didn’t care a damn where handball in went after their breakup so you decided to have a head cut off so beautiful that she would never talk to anybody else about their marital secrets and it’s potency or lack of it that’s all I have time for now
The task of living is to feel alive Not caged by walls of awe or steely fence We want to love,be taken by surprise.
Our wounded, mangled self we can’t deride, Recalling fights and struggles lived through once. The point of living is to feel alive.
We dither to and fro in puzzled ways We feel the anguish, still and quite intent. We want to love,be taken by surprise.
The self’s spontaneous, not a thing contrived; Formed with love and hate, contained, intense. The rage of living is to be alive.
When washed away by feelings glad,immense That cross our borders with our glad consent. The hope,the need of living thus is life We want to give and take and live surprised
When I was 28 my husband bought me a tin of lavender wax polish for my birthday.
How my heart speaks 