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Whenever you hear of a mass tragedy....

88keys

88keys

Golden Member
Like when thousands of people die in some sort of disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. Do any of you feel any emotional empathy for the victims?

For me I know I'm supposed to feel bad. But to be honest I really don't care even though I feel like I should.
 
When I see the faces of parents who were just enjoying life with their kids one second and their kid is gone the next, I do get verklempt. Numbers don't really hit me like those interviews do.
 
88keys said:
Like when thousands of people die in some sort of disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. Do any of you feel any emotional empathy for the victims?

For me I know I'm supposed to feel bad. But to be honest I really don't care even though I feel like I should.
Click to expand...

That's basic human nature. It's difficult for us to relate to situations we haven't experienced or aren't involved in.
 
88keys said:
Like when thousands of people die in some sort of disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. Do any of you feel any emotional empathy for the victims?

For me I know I'm supposed to feel bad. But to be honest I really don't care even though I feel like I should.
Click to expand...


Yes. One of the most saddest was the Sandy Hook shooting. I still remember the bell that rang for each victim on that grey, cold December morning.

http://www.wkyc.com/video/204960962...or-Sandy-Hook-victims-one-week-after-shooting
 
88keys said:
Like when thousands of people die in some sort of disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. Do any of you feel any emotional empathy for the victims?

For me I know I'm supposed to feel bad. But to be honest I really don't care even though I feel like I should.
Click to expand...

They are just other humans.

Do you get emotional when elephants are killed for their tusks? When Sea World mistreats whales? Do you get emotional when someone smashes their shoe and pounces on an ant hill? Or spray poison at bugs/cockroaches?

It's retarded if you "feel emotion" for random humans (People you do not know anything about and have never met) and not for anything else I mentioned.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
They are just other humans.

Do you get emotional when elephants are killed for their tusks? When Sea World mistreats whales? Do you get emotional when someone smashes their shoe and pounces on an ant hill? Or spray poison at bugs/cockroaches?

It's retarded if you "feel emotion" for random humans (People you do not know anything about and have never met) and not for anything else I mentioned.
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Personally, yes to all of those. But I think that your comparison a bit excessive.

Empathy for animals is one thing, but it's kind of cold-blooded to not feel something for people. The thought that it could have been me in that situation. Do you not feel any empathy for soldiers? I think many people can relate to the lives, deaths, and tragedy of those they don't personally know. It's why we have memorials.
 
I feel much more when animals suffer than I do about people.

However, I purposely avoid all of it as much as possible. Please don't harsh my blissful buzz of ignorance with real life. 🙂
 
mmntech said:
That's basic human nature. It's difficult for us to relate to situations we haven't experienced or aren't involved in.
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Not really, plenty of people also look for ways to assist. Volunteering their time, traveling to the affected area to help, to donating money.
 
Humpy said:
I feel much more when animals suffer than I do about people.
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I think a lot of people do, which seems odd and I wonder why we think that way. Maybe because we have this belief that adults should be able to fend for themselves, but we have this feeling that animals are helpless and need our help. That's not necessarily true, but since we've domesticated so many animals we may just have that thought process as part of our society now.

Even movies... I'll get much more emotional about a dog dying in a movie than I ever would about a person. And I'm not talking about an action movie where people bite it all the time, I mean one of those really sad tug on your heart strings movies where they WANT you to cry. Dog death is always worse, and I don't know why.
 
I absolutely do feel empathy when I read stories like that. 9/11 and the images of ordinary people jumping out of a building affected me for years. I pretty much avoid all those sorts of images now. I don't need pictures in my head of terrible events I was not present to affect. The story is important, but I don't need the pictures.
 
ultimatebob said:
That's the Newtown flag pole in that picture, right? I think that I recognize it.
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Yes, that angle is north of the flagpole on Route 25 looking south towards the 25/6 intersection.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.413...rYPeRhX2K_hu4liLow!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

And as others have said, 1 death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic. Unless you have some sort of personal connection to a victim, the bigger the tragedy the harder it is to wrap your mind around it. One death we can imagine and personalize because we all know somebody who died prematurely. Hundreds or thousands is too abstract, most of us will go through life and never be close to or in any way connected to something on that scale.
 
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Even if Dunbar's number is much higher than what is estimated, I still cannot hold 7 billion people in my own "monkey sphere". So, while intellectually I grasp what happened, emotionally I am unaffected. With the exception of when a victim/s causes me to view them as a surrogate for someone I care for. When e.g. I get hit by the "That could have been my child" knee jerk reaction, it can really move me.
 
Yeah, a little, but you shouldn't feel bad if you don't.
You are too far removed from the situation.
It might as well be a TV show as far as you are concerned.

Do you feel sad watching fiction?
 
88keys said:
Like when thousands of people die in some sort of disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. Do any of you feel any emotional empathy for the victims?

For me I know I'm supposed to feel bad. But to be honest I really don't care even though I feel like I should.
Click to expand...

When i envision it, i try to put myself in their situation, then i feel it. But when you say to me, hundred people died... The appropriate response is : "Oh my god, that is awful" . But only until when i put myself in their position : I envision... And feel the misery. That is how it works for me. My empathy works only when i put myself in others shoes. And i do that a lot. If i would not do that, life would be easier, but a lot more lonely.
 
I have empathy, but I don't dwell on it.
If I don't have a personal connection, I think of it in a statistical sense. I don't have to know the person directly, sometimes it's a musical connection. SRV's passing moved me more than any recent multiple murder.
Sometimes, people that lose their gourd over something that didn't happen to them strike me as a little self serving, a little too drama queen for me. Maybe I'm just a dick. Maybe it's a tinge of Asperger's. Me losing my mind isn't going to bring anyone back.

This is the problem with so many 24/7 news outlets. Every tragic event is reported and some people tend to co-opt them as their own.
 
It depends on the event. I remember being so angry and saddened by Newtown, as well as the Charleston shooting. When I hear about 30 people being killed by Millitants in Iraq or Afghanistan, it doesn't his as close to home. A lot of people also freaked out when Michael Jackson died. I didn't really feel anything about that.
 
All I usually feel with any notable intensity grateful that I wasn't there, and fear at the prospect that I could be in the next one at any time. It's hard for me to empathize with people I don't know.
 
When they show the faces of the family members, it's tough to not get hit in the feels.
Like the lost Malaysian airplane. At first, it was just a lost plane to me.

Then they showed the victim family center where everyone was gathered on cots, etc, waiting for answers.
That must have been horrendous.
 
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