| Interesting point and this loops back around (in my mind) to the beginning. 6 triangles into a half dead thread, the only thing to do is quote Douglas Adams: "..we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world." Why do we even have an expectation that someone in the street will help us any more than we have an expectation that someone in a different country would help us. The majority of us have, right now, the ability to help someone with similarly urgent problems. Medical or nutritional. There are still people campaign out after their house got blown away in the Philipines earthquake. Thinking about this as "not my area" is an anonymous mentality. Like saying "I support education projects. I don't know anything about refugee projects." She is asking "Why didn't you behave like my friends and neighbors" We could help them without endangering ourselves. If I was one the the bystanders who didn't help this person, I would feel ashamed. Is this sentiment a vestige? |