and the reason why aristotle argues this is that he argues it in the plays of people like soft cleese or euripides. you find two emotions that are being arouseed in the spectator; fear and pity. pity based on an awareness of how close you might be to undergoing some of the traumas and torment of the tragic hero, how every life is prone to catastrophe. that if we are pushed hard enough on our weakest spots, we, too, will collapse. if we haven't done anything catastrophic, we'll be victims of the furies of fate, yet it may come tomorrowment so these very, very cautionary messages are coded in tragedy and so we feel fear, and then we feel -- so we feel pity, and then we feel fear for ourselves based on an awareness of how close we are to the tragedy that we have witnessed, the kind of tragedy that we have witnessed. this is immensely sophisticated, and it is absolutely the material with which "the new york post," the mail online, any number of outlets every day are presenting us with this stuff. it's not low at all. as so often is the case -- and i argue this consistently in my book -- t