A distinct failure of the feels

My brother has long considered me a creature of extreme empathy, and therefore a being made of up 90% waste material. He considers empathy a total indulgence, positive in no way and giving no real help, and god knows, the boy walks his talk.

Me, I do feel, sometimes more, sometimes less. I wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't found a way to empathise with my attacker; though it was an act born of necessity, it was far from entirely false. The man had a story, a real painful life, and I heard it. And for all it made me think How can I use this? There was also the feeling of pain and the understanding of kind of shite that led him to my door, each step of a ruined and abused life. I wished he had not gone through such things not just because of the benefit to me, but because he genuinely deserved much better. Yes, he was scum, a jail rat, a thief, a would-be rapist, a would-be killer. But once upon a time he was a kid taught nothing better than a trade in burglary. It's hard to be a good person under such circumstances. I know it, I feel it, I genuinely knew it and felt it then.

So yes, I'm not without empathy. My brother is. He thinks I tune in to minute human signals insignificant or absurd enough to be ignored if one is being properly dispassionately compassionate; for their own good you understand. A lot of people think I am quite kind. But just as many people wonder at my ability to miss signals and be genuinely thoroughly blank and disconnected. I have no idea how or when it happens, no clue as to how right they are, no idea how to know why and when I'm doing it right or doing it wrong. In the end, all I have is how I feel and how I perceive they feel.

Yesterday, the Guardian published photos of the wildfires across Saddleworth Moor. Here they are: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2018/jun/27/wildfires-sweep-across-moors-outside-manchester-in-pictures

The event is terrifying and potentially tragic, but some of the photos are beautiful. I made a comment to this effect, only to receive a reply telling me that there was no way in which this could be called beautiful. How stupid can people get? Do only ugly things or ugly people hurt us? Are volcanos or sea-storms or big cats ugly? Or do we just interchange the idea of beautiful for 'what I find good/safe' or 'what I like'? I think the idea was that I should not be able to consider the aesthetics of anything so devastating; I should be swept up in horror at the whole thing, and a kind of terror/pity was the only appropriate combination of emotions. Anything other betrayed a glassy coldness, a distance from the tragedy, presumably the same kind of distance so many of these trembling feelers wibbling about loss of wildlife and personal safety manage whenever they're in a supermarket surrounded by once tormented corpses.

Ah but. Piped music and air conditioning, and death a while back in a far off place. Someone else's horror, someone else's hell.

Anyway, some of the photos are beautiful. I'm not going to be shamed for noticing that.