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Natalia
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Death of compassion?
October 9, 2006 - 05:24 PM
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Is our age witness to the death of compassion and the wide spread proliferation of apathy? We have reached a point in society when many of us are so detached from other human beings that we can observe human misery on the news quite comfortably without suffering the burden of having to put ourselves in others’ shoes. How many of us felt anger or compassion when we saw the photographs depicting Iraqi torture at the hands of U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib? In a self-obsessed society empathy seems to have been replaced with an individualistic sentimentality which heralds such slogans as “look out for number one” and “the only one you can count on is yourself.” From a psychological point of view emotions such as sympathy and happiness travel along the same neural pathways – when we allow just one of these neural impulses to deteriorate many pathways will depreciate because of the fundamentally interconnected nature of our emotions. In this way we seem to lose our ability to feel for others which in turn alienates us from others. Interestingly, a recent World Health Organization study has shown that the rise in alienation is almost perfectly correlated with the worsening of mental health. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that within the last decade the use of antidepressants such as Paxil and Zoloft has tripled. One in ten Americans is currently medicated and these numbers are constantly growing. The irony is that drugs like Paxil and Zoloft seem to treat mental disorders by means of manufactured apathy. Seems like the newest global-scale plague is numbness…
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Saladin
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 9, 2006 - 08:07 PM
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Very well put!
But what do you think should be our response as individuals?
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Patricia Kumar
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 10, 2006 - 02:28 AM
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I have to disagree.
Compassion is not dead.
We have not turned apathetic.
Sure some of us dont care but what about everyong else?
What about those lobbying for peace, those standing out and givin those without a voice a voice? what about them?
Compassion is not dead....there is the same amount of compasssion as there always was, if not, more and more people are being compassionate.
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vas
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 10, 2006 - 04:07 AM
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This reminds me of a recent incident in India.A youth clibmed up a building and threatned to commit suicide.All the news cahnnel gathered to cover the story .There were pleas made to him to come down but he didnt.the fire fighthing squad was o the way. news cahnnel reported live.in the heat of the whole drama suddenly the youth fell from the building.all the chanels showed it live. and after that all of them ran discussions on lack of cmpassion in media and why didnt any one came forwrad to save the youth.
Then in another incident a young boy fell into a dry well in a viallage.A news cahnnel covered the incident.then all news channles followed.Sensing public sympathy a massive resuce operation involving army was launched.a team of doctors was flown to teh viallge to care the boy ,after resuce operation.it was all shown live with government ministers in attendance. what if the news channels hadnt covered the incident? surely then such outcry and support for resuce of the small poor boy wouldnt have been there.
so compassion is being glorified now.
infact look at me what am i doing? just replying to a post on compassion .am i actually doing something except taking part in a discussion.!!!!!!!!
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Alan Thomas
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 10, 2006 - 10:41 AM
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I both agree and disagree with the statement; so I guess that puts me at a neutral point in a sense.
Though, there are many out there who have lost compassion, there are also a whole lot more who still have theirs. Their only problem is that they can often barely do anything to help themselves. So they see events covered by the media and often can't do a thing about it. It's said that one must be able to help ones self before he or she can help one another.
Another probablem that they often face is fear for safety. Though it's not commonly shown, tons of people from many different countries have gone to other countries to help them. However, not all of them have returned in one piece. I'm sure that hundreds from both the US, UK, Canada, and a few other countries have gone to Iraq to volunteer to help the people... however, they're in constant danger of being killed just for being there.
Why, just today we heard of reports of someone who was a very great supporter in creating new schools, being killed at complete random. It's this form of nationalism that often makes the compassionate consider their own families and lives before those of others. Some wouldn't like to abandon the lives of their children and spouses to try to help in a palce where their help isn't wanted to such a violent extent... It's a lose-lose situation there.
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Natalia
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 10, 2006 - 02:01 PM
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vas21 wrote:
This reminds me of a recent incident in India.A youth clibmed up a building and threatned to commit suicide.All the news cahnnel gathered to cover the story .There were pleas made to him to come down but he didnt.the fire fighthing squad was o the way. news cahnnel reported live.in the heat of the whole drama suddenly the youth fell from the building.all the chanels showed it live. and after that all of them ran discussions on lack of cmpassion in media and why didnt any one came forwrad to save the youth.
Then in another incident a young boy fell into a dry well in a viallage.A news cahnnel covered the incident.then all news channles followed.Sensing public sympathy a massive resuce operation involving army was launched.a team of doctors was flown to teh viallge to care the boy ,after resuce operation.it was all shown live with government ministers in attendance. what if the news channels hadnt covered the incident? surely then such outcry and support for resuce of the small poor boy wouldnt have been there.
so compassion is being glorified now.
infact look at me what am i doing? just replying to a post on compassion .am i actually doing something except taking part in a discussion.!!!!!!!!
This is exactly what I mean! There have always been compassionate people in the world who cared enough to act and try to make a difference. Lately however, it seems many people have become saturated by the images they see in the news - its one big emotional drama, entertaining scandal, shocking report. This explains why so much aid was sent from around the world to the tsunami victims while Africa continued (and still continues) to wait for the aids relief they were promised. Why? Seemingly because the tsunami disaster got more coverage on the news and governments were eager to join the bandwagon.
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Erick Ochieng Otieno
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 13, 2006 - 12:36 AM
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I think the best we can do is to start asking our selves this question, "What if we were the ones on the other shoe?What would we have expected others to do as individuals?"It is true that sometimes the answers are not forthcoming as we believe that those who are suffering deserve it.However, if I may ask, what about if the suffering ones were our own brothers or sisters and mothers and fathers and all that matter to us, would we still say that they deserve to suffer? If we could look futher behind, most of our cultures promoted compassion and even in some cases forgiveness where it matterd.Let us promote the same compassion.
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That guy
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 14, 2006 - 05:06 PM
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aymanelhakea wrote:
Very well put!
But what do you think should be our response as individuals?
Volunteer in a soup kitchen! Raise awareness about some horrible thing that's happening in Africa or lobby your local politicians into doing the right thing (or better yet, vote for ones you won't have to lobby). Love somebody, or failing that love something! Humans did not evolve to exist completely without empathy.
All any of us can do to turn the tide is to "be the change you want to see in the world", to quote Ghandi.
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Erick Ochieng Otieno
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Re: Death of compassion?
October 15, 2006 - 04:28 AM
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I believe that the best we can do as individuals is to start with ploughing compassion within ourselves.In doing this,we do not have to go to the soup kitchen or something like that, but be reasonable and rational as we deal with issues requiring compassion and understanding.
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