She's a real character, that one!

I just read this blog: http://www.thewayandvirtue.com/emotional-deficit/#comment-126 and so I was thinking about so-called emotional deficit.

In particular, the reason I will cry or have a tantrum about some character in a book, but if a "real" person has a child die, or tells me of some tragic injustice, I don't care. I don't feel anything for them. I'd just as soon shoot them in the face.

They are not real.

That is the short answer.

I don't know why they are fake. Perhaps they are not fake to each other. I am supposedly bad at reading people. Perhaps there are hundreds of little communications that I miss, that flesh out the literal-three-dimensional into multi-emotional dimensions as well.

In a book, a good book anyway, people are Real. You know everything important about them. You know WHY they choose to do each action. This makes it very easy to pick sides, to like them or hate them. You know how you are supposed to feel.

So part of the reason "real" humans are fake, is because I don't understand them, I don't know them, I don't get them, they are flat, boring dolls.

I don't have oodles of feeling for people I DO know either, but I definitely have more. The more I know about someone, the more likely it is that I might care.

An interesting category is online people. People I "know" but not really. Just words on a page. This makes them very like a book. Each paragraph more Real than a fake-3D-person.

The state of being where you can see that you SHOULD, but can't grasp humans as real, is often what i mean when i say i feel disconnected.

logic-know says: real.
feel-know says: not.

This should not make sense.

Because CATS are ALWAYS real. So a person should feel the same. I have never met a fake cat or a fake dog. People are warm and breathing just like that. So, if only as an animal, they ought to register as real, as a presence.