08/07/2025
To say that 1066 is an important date in history is an understatement. Even by his own account, William the Conquerer was merciless, leaving the dead to rot in the battlefield.
And yet here’s me, fooling around on said battlefield. How? Am I devoid of ?
has my back on this one. People’s emotional empathy changes depending on time. When something is far removed from our current experience (like the Battle of Hastings) it becomes less emotionally charged and more abstract. This shift is known as psychological distance, and it reduces empathic engagement.
We don’t feel compelled to mourn for long-dead soldiers in the same way we do for victims of a recent tragedy, because empathy depends heavily on proximity, temporal, physical and social.
We may know, intellectually, that those people suffered, but it doesn’t activate the same visceral empathic reaction.
