“I am not a cow, or thistles for camels
to browse on. People who insult me
are only polishing the mirror.”
-Rumi, Polishing the Mirror trans. Coleman Barks
“Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself, and with that revelation, make freedom real.” -James Baldwin, The Creative Process
I want to research mirror neurons. Apparently they're a relatively hot topic in the body sciences right now. The basic idea is that if you watch somebody do something, the same neural pathways that are activated when you do that action are activated when you watch. You watch someone throw a ball, and in your brain you are throwing the ball, just without actual physical motion of your arm.
The idea keeps getting brought up in my kinesiology classes, because, well, it's a pretty cool concept. It's how we can learn to do something well just by watching it enough times and practicing through imitation. For kinesiologists, the appeal is obvious, we like bodies and are always focusing on how to better use them.
What I want to know though, is how sensitive are these mirror neurons? If our brains can extrapolate a human motion by watching floating dots on a screen move a certain way in relation to each other, how human does what we see have to be? Can we watch a cartoon or a stick figure and have their movements incite mirror neuron activity if it's human enough? Are they activated if we read about something instead of seeing it?
In another direction, what kind of credence does this give to the notion that violence begets violence?
Studies have already shown that smiling and being around smiling, happy people, tends to make you a happier person. Then if we see violent things like abuse and physical altercations, does that make us more violent or prone to violence? When I see someone kick a dog or smack a child, I feel bad. Is this because in my head these mirror neurons have me taking that same action? Perhaps I feel bad because in the act of watching, I am the one inflicting that pain. That's a scary thought to me. It means that I'm complicit in the violence around me because of my inaction in stopping it.
It reminds me of a line from the movie Shortbus where one of the main characters is gawking at the orgy happening before her and a person passing by comments “Voyeurism is a form of participation.” Maybe that's why watching porn feels good. Watching sex excites your brain similar to the way having sex does. That's also why it can feel dirty or inappropriate, because on some level you're experiencing something without doing it.
Mirror neurons seem to represent a kind of physical [visceral] empathy. When watching a slasher flick, how many people wince right as one of the characters gets stabbed and dies? Is this because we're feeling the knife?
Based on what little I know of them, the existence of mirror neurons suggests to me a hardwired drive toward community and social interaction. We get along because I feel your pain and I feel your happiness. My body is made to respond to those around me. I am shaped and inscribed by the environment around me.
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