Tragedy is what happens to me and comedy is what happens to you, so the response to misfortune is set by distance from it.
Brooks's formulation contrasts a small injury to himself with a fatal one to a stranger, and the point is that the difference in reaction has nothing to do with the difference in severity. It states, in one line, the identifiable victim effect, psychic numbing and the gap between fortitude offered and fortitude required.
In practice
- A restructuring is a difficult but necessary decision on one floor and a catastrophe on another.
- A statistic about job losses is read differently by the reader whose job is in it.
- Standing
- The same asymmetry La Rochefoucauld named in 1665, stated as a joke about jokes.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Moralists, aphorists and the self-help tradition