Compassion Fatigue?

[Philippa]

I put a question mark at the end of the subject heading, as I'm honestly not sure whether what I experience when yet another tragic shooting or act of terror occurs in the world, as with the latest Charlie Hebdo situation in Paris, is due to ptsd or compassion fatigue, but there are simply too many terrible things going on that I feel like I have no more sadness or compassion to give, and especially when the media displays to all over the news, when how many millions are dying of starvation or general bad conditions around the world, not to mention cancer victims, AIDS victims, EBOLA for christ sake?

I feel basically numb and unable to squeeze out any kind of appropriate sadness or shock or anything really. It's just another thing. I worry when this happens, as it feels like I'm sociopathic for not being more sad when everyone in the world is attending candlelight vigils and talking about it. I just came home, watched the amazing atheist call for more satirical cartoons to be drawn in defiance of this cowardly attack on these creative beings...which seems like the only weapon we really can beat them with. I don't understand how anyone could have so little of a sense of humour as to resort to killing actual people for making CARTOONS?? Mocking someones religion may not be the 'nicest' thing to do, but it's not something anyone deserves to die for.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

Hey Philippa.

The first thing I thought when I saw your headline and then read the rest of your post was "you don't have to...".
Maybe this is my background talking, I have a feeling the Dutch (of who I am a part) have an easier time detaching themselves from certain things, but how can you possibly have enough compassion for all of the negative events which are happening in the world?

These aren't even all the events. They are a selection made by news distributors. Which also means that only sad and depressing events are being singled out (which, granted, are very sad and depressing) and no happy news is making the cut. You have no responsibility whatsoever to feel bad for all of these people, and even if you wanted to feel bad for all of them, it's not really helping anyone...

You know there's shit happening constantly in the world and it's normal even for people without PTSD to start being numb to these things, because they are bombarded by them constantly. I've heard inappropriate jokes about the ebola virus already. And I only cared about the Charlie Hebdo thing today because I haven't seen or heard the news in months, and it honestly touched me. But you can't force emotion.

So I hope you don't blame yourself for it.

:hug:

 

[Friday]

People make cartoons about baby-rape, too. Just because it's a cartoon doesn't make it innocuous. Instead, it transcends language barriers. Like any form of bullying/ psychological warfare, some people find it funny, others are wounded terribly, and others are clueless as to why some people laugh and some people cry. As you say, it's a weapon. Or as has been said;

'Words are more devastating weapons than all the iron implements in all the arsenals of the world' .

& even more famously;

'The pen is mightier than the sword'.

So it's never a wonder to me when any propaganda device is targeted: newspapers, publishers, artists, radios, etc. They're crafting weapons. Winning hearts & minds. And they're soft targets, because they don't usually have the second half of that slogan (but willing to splatter them, if necessary). Especially not in the West, where we've mostly had freedom of the press for a century or three.

I'm not defending terrorism and attacks on civilians... Which I find cowardly & disgusting. That simple.

Mocking a person's religion has, however, carried the death penalty throughout most of history. Religious tolerance isn't a new concept, but it is an exceptionally sporadic one. The Romans managed it until they adopted Christianity (and then it was conversion by the sword), most Empires at least flirt with the idea for a century or two / a byproduct of huge land mass and multiplicity of religions. But one only has to look at the Inquisition, witch burnings, Reformation, Bloody Mary to the Troubles, countless genocides & ethnic cleansings... Death follows religion. Hundreds of millions have been put to death for worshipping the "wrong" god, or even more disgustingly, the "right" god, the "wrong" way. Not just historically.

So when a civilian paints a target on themselves? It's either very brave, or very stupid. And the outcome is hardly unexpected. It doesn't make it okay, simply not surprising.

 

[Philippa]

Thanks for the reminder Radise. That helped a lot. :)

 

[Anarchy]

Hi Philippa,
Me too, on one level, I'm totally numb, all of my conscious life (best part of half a century), the British government has been hyping up "terrorist threats" and demanding more and more draconian powers in order to "counter them".

On another level, I'm now deeply cynical.

We are unlikely ever to have adequate information to work out what the truth of these situations is, however we can look at history and see simillar patterns and use those as a basis for a deeper (and in many ways less comforting) interpretation.

We know from our history books that the German National Socialist Workers Party engineered the burning of the German parliament building as the centrepiece of chaos which their thugs were causing, and their leadership offered themselves forward as the only ones who could stop it - but they needed absolute power to do so...

We also know that the propaganda which the German people were fed about attrocities against and oppression of German speakers in the Sudetan Lands of Czechia were complete fabrications.

That the Gleiwitz incident in which Polish troops are claimed to have entered Germany, captured a radio station and broadcast Polish propaganda - was staged by party members as a pretext for invading Poland, Oscar Schindler is credited with having obtained the Polish uniforms that were worn.

Likewize, Stalin had Soviet artillery shell the Russian town of Mainilla, this was blamed on the Finns and used as the pretext for the full scale invasion of Finland that was the Winter War.

That is a selection, and it is very tempting to conclude that those were bad times and bad people, and such things could never happen now - or could they?

It has been in the open for a few years now that the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident, which got the united state into the Vietnam war, was a lie.

In that strange period of the early 1990s when the cold war was over and no one had built a new imagined hobgobblin up to menace us with. The BBC broadcast a series of documentaries about the secret army in Europe composed of NAZI stay behinds who had been contacted andrecruited at the end of WW2. During the 1960s and 70s, these guys, receiving orders from NATO headquarters, staged a string of "terrorist" attrocities accross Europe, including the Milan and Bologna railway station bombings, and the kidnap and murder of former Italian Prime minister Aldo Moro.

Those attacks were supposedly for the purpose of discrediting left wing political parties in Europe, it was only by chance that the truth came out, and I still cannot fathom the BBC's intent in broadcasting the documentaries

Anyone who has read this far might like to look up "Operation Northwoods" In which the united state joint chiefs of staff proposed staging terrorist attacks on American cities, which could be blamed on the Castro regime, and used to sway public opinion behind a full scale attack on Cuba. The proposal was rejected by JFK and his leadership. We know what happened to JFK.

Interestingly JFK's supposed assassin never made it to court. Neither did the patsies accused of the Milan and Bologna railway station bombings.

Gaslighting is the tactic of psychopaths and narcissists - exactly the sorts of people who rise to the top in politics. Welcome to a gas lit world where we are never sure what is real and what is not.

 

[Seagreen]

I think everyone feels like this at times. I don't watch the news anymore. The media places too much attention on the wrong things. I'm not saying that recent events on the news aren't devastating, particularly to those involved, but in reality these kinds of incidents are rare. There is more terror and violence occurring within the home. If you want to contribute to change, look at your local community and start there. No one can save the world but anyone can make it a better place.

The reality is that there is unimaginable cruelty happening all the time. It hurts but it is what it is. Your compassion is a nice sentiment but it isn't going to help those people who were affected.

If you are having trouble letting go of these feelings try asking yourself, 'Can I do something about it?'. If the answer is yes, then great. Your compassion has been useful. If the answer is no. Give yourself permission to acknowledge the sadness, then forget about it. It doesn't mean you are a bad person. No one can possibly care about every tragic event in world, we just cant. It is better to pay attention to what you can change, no matter how small, than to dwell on things which cannot be changed.

 

[seedling]

I didn't watch or listen to the news for several years. Just couldn't go there with all the negativity. I also felt nothing about what I might hear. And sometimes too much (like the earthquake in Haiti) if I watched TV.

I now hear the news on the radio at work. So much wallowing around in the worst humanity has to offer. We already know there must be untold suffering world wide.

Makes me think of C. S. Lewis in his book The Problem of Pain. He said that if two people are sitting on a bench and one has a toothache and tells the other, it doesn't make it two toothaches. It's still one toothache. It's that person's pain no matter how much the other might sympathize.

People dying in other parts of the world don't make it our death. It's their reality, for us to be supportive as we choose to be. And for us to deal with whatever pain or lack of pain we feel in seeing and hearing about it.

 

[Philippa]

@FridayJones Yes, and I'm sure they did not make those cartoons without some idea that it would cause some kind of hostile reaction from fringe Islamic groups. One of the cartoonists mentioned in 2010 after another attack from offensive satire created there, that he'd rather die on his feet than be forced to his knees, and was aware of the potential dangers to his life and the lives of his fellow cartoonists.

I know that people are free to express their sentiments about pretty much anything these days, and that's a good thing, except when it laughs in the face of what a group of people take very seriously, and consider sacred. That's obviously going to cause trouble, and when you are dealing with stupid, and primitive minds, that are horrifically brainwashed on top of everything AND wielding weapons, it's like playing russian roulette.

Not tolerating religion is not going to make the ones who take it to heart suddenly turn around and renounce theirs and end all religion, like atheists want to happen. Religion has been a part of humanity since humans started walking on two legs. It's not going to go away because more people happen to be thinking for themselves these days.

I think everyone feels like this at times. I don't watch the news anymore. The media places too much attention on the wrong things.

I don't either, though it is hard with social media to not have it seep through the cracks. I've unfollowed most of the news pages that were on my page now, but things like TIME and SBS had the story covered all over the place...hard to not see it. I suppose I've allowed some to remain as I felt so far removed from the rest of the world for so many years, and alienated from what is going on that I thought I needed to start 'catching up', but nothing has changed really. It's still just a diet of fear and negativity they want to fill people up with.

I'm not saying that recent events on the news aren't devastating, particularly to those involved, but in reality these kinds of incidents are rare. There is more terror and violence occurring within the home. If you want to contribute to change, look at your local community and start there. No one can save the world but anyone can make it a better place.

Agreed. Thanks for injecting some perspective here. I think I'm just so exhausted from work and the last week of celebrations that I'm not totally thinking straight.

The reality is that there is unimaginable cruelty happening all the time. It hurts but it is what it is. Your compassion is a nice sentiment but it isn't going to help those people who were affected.

I realise this and usually do think this way about most cases of people being murdered or raped or whatever else it is. I think the outcry from the public on social media is more about them appearing to be 'good people' to everyone else, but you never really know what is really happening in their hearts...and they may be just as numb and indifferent but want to be seen to care? I don't know...that's me being cynical I guess.

If you are having trouble letting go of these feelings try asking yourself, 'Can I do something about it?'. If the answer is yes, then great. Your compassion has been useful. If the answer is no. Give yourself permission to acknowledge the sadness, then forget about it. It doesn't mean you are a bad person. No one can possibly care about every tragic event in world, we just cant. It is better to pay attention to what you can change, no matter how small, than to dwell on things which cannot be changed.

Thanks. I think I was more trying to clarify for myself whether I was just experiencing this 'compassion fatigue' because I remember feeling the same when the twin towers came down. I'm not from America and when it doesn't directly affect you it's hard to fully feel that it is even real when it's just images on a screen especially. It's all fodder anyway for people to consume and regurgitate, and then ultimately forget. Like junkfood...but a very perverse diet of it.

I know people who actually partied on new years by dressing up as known terrorists! That was their way of laughing in the face of terrorism and PCness that is everywhere I think. It rubbed a lot of people the wrong way when I told them, but I could see where they were coming from. What better medicine than to laugh in the face of terrorism and make them seem like caricatures...even if it is 'wrong'.

.

 

[rightkindofme]

I have a number of friends who spend a lot of time on activist work and we talk about compassion fatigue a lot. We talk about how most activists need to take time off to take care of themselves. You can fall in the hole of other peoples pain and never get out if you allow it. Or you can go numb and never feel compassion for anyone again because it is too big to even absorb.

Life is hard. I only get news through Twitter and I go weeks without checking that because I can't handle it.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I think that we're bombarded with this sort of stuff on a daily basis, so we become desensitized. I just read an article on the situation in France, and once again, I am more compassionate for the people who did wrong than the victims. I don't understand the mentality of freedom of the press when its used to BULLY a certain group. Society is cracking down on abusive bullies when its a face to face situation, but decries FREEDOM OF THE PRESS when the same BS is put in print. It sends the message that its unacceptable to abuse someone in person but as long as we print it then we can say whatever the hell we want, and if someone reacts (much as a bullied or abused person would), then we cry VICTIM and say that those who lashed back are the bad guys. Oh please. Cowardly journalists need to stop writing whatever the hell they want because of this "freedom of the press" BS that is being taken too far. They are using the "freedom of the press" crap in order to justify the mocking and slandering of certain groups of people. As long as journalists are going to use their pens to bully, I say RISE UP! This is just more sticks and stones BS and we ALL know that words do hurt. In today's day and age, people need to practice responsible journalism, which is not censorship, rather compassion and sensitivity for all. Wanna use your pen to bully? Go ahead, but don't expect their to not be any repercussions. Journalists know the power of their pens, and they're getting everyone on their side by this "freedom of the press" issue. Rather than examine what's being said, everyone rallies behind journalism because nobody wants to loose freedom of speech. Honestly, I do blame the journalists for this crap....inciting violence and then crying "VICTIM!" when something bad happens. The blood is all over their hands. Nobody lives in a bubble.

 

[Anarchy]

A selection of short videos which I think cut to the heart of the matter.

The first two are about traffic lights (yeah -ok - WTF?:rolleyes:).

Traffic lights act as familliar, solid representations of the idea of entitlement: " I'm entitled to do X and you are not entitled to do Y, and I'll get damned angry with you if you try to do y. Why? because the red and green lights say so"

The second vid in particular, shows the peaceful cooperation and reciprocity which becomes possible, even with people who have grown up with the idea of entitlement, as soon as the assumption of entitlement is removed.

The final video is a very satirical short clip from a South Park episode (no, I don't think it shows an individual who lived in Mecca in the Sixth Century). South Park uses children with ginger hair to represent a minority which others assume that they are entitled to abuse.

Who wins when people feel entitled to initiate violence;
Those most adept at using violence

Who is most adept at using violence:
Psychopaths and narcissists.

Who has most to gain by persuading people that they are entitled to initiate the use of violence?

 

[Rebel Girl]

Feeling like I care about societal injustice more than nearly everyone else is one of the things that makes me deeply cynical.