CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

Feelings Speak Truth to Power? Sometimes

Blog City for April 9 2019:





Prompt: Devorah Baum writes, “Troubling though they may be, feelings tell us something about power and its limitations.” What do you think she means? In what ways can feelings be associated with power and its limitations?





I think feelings may demonstrate to us our own powerlessness. For example, I am a member of Care2, an activist online community, and I daily despair at the horrors humans inflict on animals (and humans). Despair and hopelessness are my feelings, but when I'm reading about events that have already occurred, I'm powerless to reverse time and avoid those. Ongoing events like festivals in which animals are killed and/or eaten, yes, we can sign petitions to stop those; but what can anyone do about the animals already killed? Like the iconic Clarence, the lion in Africa killed by a despicable American dentist trophy hunter with far more ego and Narcissism than compassion.