0807 New day, rainy day
🌧️ It hasn’t rained for a long time.
💭 I have to write the draft speech for my girlfriend. I will do it this afternoon.
📝 09:30 Filled in the attendance sheet — so boring to do this every month… Isn’t it the IT age now?
📖 09:45 Continued reading Between Us Chapter 3
Notes:
Emotions help us become part of our culture.
Shame highlights your proper place in an unalienable social network, rather than focusing on rejection or isolation.
It reminds you how to behave in the network, but it does not push you out.Omoiyari “refers to the ability and willingness to feel what others are feeling, to vicariously experience the pleasure and pain that they are undergoing, and to help them satisfy their wishes.” The emotion is at the very center of the harmonious relatedness that is culturally valued in Japan.
Perspective taking makes a person ponder about how they can improve to better meet others’ expectations, and to persevere and overcome externally encountered adversities.
The idea that omoiyari has to be cultivated, but cannot be forced onto kids until they are ready, prevails in Japanese preschool practices. Teachers show great restraint, even if the interactions between preschoolers are conflictual, and at times aggressive.
When the (white middle-class) American goal may be to raise a child who is secure enough to become independent, the Japanese goal is to raise a child who becomes sensitive enough to take perspective. If pride and happiness are foregrounded in many American and European contexts, then amae and omoiyari are socializing emotions in Japan.
Outside-in emotions are cultivated to first meet the needs of the environment, including relationships with others.
Inside-out emotions follow the feelings out.We experience such emotions as pride, shame, fear, love, amae, omoiyari, calm, and excitement because they are instilled in us by our parents and other cultural agents. Rather than emerging from someplace deep within us, these emotions have been conditioned by recurrent experiences within our cultures.
Emotions remain OURS into adulthood. The fabric of our emotions is woven by interactions with others. These interactions account for how we feel and act.
🤡 10:10 Signed in to Tianya — the famous site, but kind of boring
📖 14:10 Finished reading Chapter 3 and started writing the draft speech for my girlfriend
Found the list of Chinese Mastodon instances
🖋️ 16:30 Finally finished the draft speech
🏄♀️ 17:00 Slacked off till end of work