The loss of empathy

[UpInArms]

This is at the heart of so many of our most vexing problems.

Too many people see things every day that they would never tolerate in their own lives, but feel no need to intervene.

It could be something major like watching a grown man sexually brutalize a child, and then looking away ... but hey ... that child was not HIS younger brother/nephew/child. That child was not someone he knew, so it was no biggie.

It could be something quite minor, like picking up money that someone in front of you drops unknowingly, and not saying "Hey, you dropped this." It's not like you knew that person, or that the $20 they dropped might be grocery money. Finders-keepers.

Empathy-loss is all around us.

TV shows delight in humiliating people.

Everything is now a contest.

Cooking shows used to be about teaching people how to cook..Now they are "wars", where contestants hope for others to screw up, so they can "win."

It's all about the cheap laugh, the public humiliation of people who don't "measure up"..people who are placed there for our amusement when they get "punked."

It extends into politics too.

How many times have we seen politicians routinely and callously vote against things that people need, UNTIL someone in their own family (or they themselves) suddenly, by fate, are placed in the same boat?

Familial empathy is easy. In most families we are taught to care for and about each other.

An evolved society cares about ALL people.

We care when others cannot afford food, and we feed them. We do not laugh at them and deride them for being too lazy to find work.

We care when others cannot find health care they can afford, and we try to see that they do get care ... We do not shrug our shoulders and say ... "Too bad about that..they should have taken better care of themselves."

Lack of empathy allows all kinds of terrible things to happen, because as people get more and more insulated, it gets easier and easier to go from ignoring bad things that happen to others, to helping those bad things happen ... and enjoying the process.

(I wrote this in 2011 .... seems like I must have been having a "vision." )