Empathy - Kiwi test

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Were you watching the "Mad World version" wherein the song included some sort of musing about dreaming of death? That's not the version linked.

I've been thinking for a while that the kiwi's feelings are not totally consistent with being suicidal. It seems almost like he's being forced into it. So now I think he has some sort of terminal illness, or is soon to incur some form of disability (somebody introduce him to the social model), and would rather die than face it, but would rather live than die. Hence his fear and sadness. The bit at the end looks like great sadness, but stoic acceptance, as if he's saying he's not scared, he's not going to blubber and beg.

Because it wasn't obvious that he was nailing the tree to the side of the cliff. It looked like he was hammering nails into the tops of the roots of a tree growing out of the side of a cliff. Which left me wondering both why a tree would be growing like that, and why he'd be hammering nails into it.

It also wasn't obvious that, after he jumps, the camera changes angle. It looked to me like the ground leveled out and he switched to flying. And then I was confused when the bitty wings popped out.

Pretty easy to not get.

Didn't move me, because I didn't get what was going on. I appreciated the bird's frustration when he was trying to pull the rope, but after that I was lost and not making sense of what was going on.

I don't think mindblindness is the opposite of empathy, but I do think that mindblindness does mean a lack of empathy. By definition. You can't understand what someone else is thinking or feeling if you lack the ability to have an awareness of what's in someone else's mind. Simply due to the word definitions, it's impossible to have true, full, mindblindness and also have empathy. It's impossible to have both at the same time.

Which has nothing to do with how things are outside the realm of word meaning. That two words have meanings such that one means not the other says nothing at all about people with autism.

If people with autism do have empathy, then they aren't truly mindblind. Maybe difficulties seeing the others perspective, but not a black and white fully mindblind kind of thing.

Personally, I know I can be lacking in empathy at times. But it's not an absolute thing. And it's nothing to do with my emotions. It's a matter of not seeing the other's perspective. You could call it a partial mind-blindness. Which doesn't stop me from having empathy at other times when I do understand what's going on in someone's mind.

I didn't feel anything till i saw the tear and then it felt like someone kicked me in my stomach and everything made sense all at once.

Well, it was clapping its feet which may indicate happiness. As for the jump, I did not see fear but I guess it could make sense since it is about to jump and die just to fulfill its dream.

I tried one more time to get the link you posted, and it doesn´t seem to be available in my country. No wonder I didn´t "get it" the first time, as the cartoon was happening I was picturing (in my mind) glasses filled with tears, and a classroom with a teacher who didn´t understand the little bird, rather than actually watching what was going on! (It turns out it was the "Mad World" version I was watching, with a song, and text). I think the actual cartoon is the same, though.

I saw it again, and this time I did see the tear. The first 2 times I was watching the background, as well the little "wings". Yes, I think it´s a tear of joy. Especially because the bird closed its eyes before, as if it were so filled with emotion it was too much to bear.

Thinking about this thread and the "Intense World Syndrome" threads, I'm thinking, when we are lacking in empathy, it's not because we are insensitive. It's an inability to see the other's perspective, or just not thinking about them having a different perspective from one's own. We can have a deficit in that and still, when we do see the other's perspective, or imagine it, we are sensitive to it.

What was I thinking? Roughly:

1) Is that a kiwi? Is that really what a kiwi looks like?
(not in a "ZOMG u cannot draw teh kiwi" way, just in an "I can't remember, thought they were browner and somehow differently proportioned" way)
2) What is that, some kind of catapult string? That's awfully thin to pull a large tree like that.
(didn't get the whole jumping-off thing until later - had picked up on the "poor little birdie about to die" thing from the comments on the video, unfortunately, plus the thread context of course implied it'd be something like that)
3) Hyperspace arsenal!
(er, toolkit)
4) Uh-huh.
(denouement spoiled by comments and context as per above)