What the hell happened to compassion in America?

Everywhere I look people are filled with raged and fear. Mocking your fellow human beings is the order of the day. People are left to fend for themselves. Somebody who can't "rise up" is perceived as weak and spat upon. People aren't cordial anymore, people aren't friendly. This is not America.

answer to that question... Hey GWB loves you don't you know?

We have to face that what was is no more :(

But welcome to DU!

and financed by the earliest corporations. The rest is myth.

That we managed to do better for a while is amazing, and, may be amazing again.

Sorry

and achieve a New World Order, the old society first must be broken down to it's fundamental element.

The being, it's animal instinct. The reptilian brain.

But it will pass ~ and even now there are good people doing good things every day; it just doesn't get reported on the news. I spend as much time in nature as possible these days ~ the best remedy!

destined for hell, and worthy only of contempt for being lazy, feckless, useless, uneducated, and generally inferior so that they could justify their theft of the majority of the wealth of this country.

Listen to any right wing pundit and you will know what killed compassion, a formula of patting listeners on the back for clinging to jobs they hate while making them feel infinitely superior to people who might be working even harder but who are mired in the poverty conferred by a birthright of closed doors and unavailable opportunity.

Hate sells, unfortunately, and a lot of people in this country get a charge out of righteous hatred, hatred with official approval of groups that are clearly identified.

Hate also started messes like Rwanda and Bosnia.

We know what to do about it, really. First, we have to laugh at the stuff that's over the top, no matter how sickened we feel that human beings would repeat it. Second, we have to make such hate socially unacceptable, not worthy of discussion among normal people. Third, we have to continue product boycotts of sponsors of right wing hate on the radio. Fourth, and most important, religious people of all faiths will have to drop the pretense of Christian solidarity and identify churches that preach hatred as what they are and repudiate them.

Compassion is a basic American value, a basic Christian value, and a basic human value. We can get it back, but we're going to have to take it back.

It's up to us.

I am sure you knew this, so not a correction, but needed to be said.

Indeed, the discovery of "Mirror neurons" might help to explain the phenomenon in biochemical terms.
We might then find these neurons in other animals as well, or not.
I would say that compassion/empathy is as much what makes for what we call human (as much as intelligence or speech or timebinding, etc) - and so the implications of discovering this in other species is something to consider.

Now, sympathy, empathy and compassion and the comparisons of those terms, and how they differ in various cultures would be a long, but interesting discussion.


There is still much compassion in the world.
It is under attack by authoritarian tendencies, crass disregard or abstraction for others and on and on.
But it may be wired into us, and we can work on the culture part - subcultures evolve quite quickly, especially these days.

So there is hope.

Just sayin.

:silly:

Really, I just wanted to share the "mirror neurons" bit, but then I forgot to add a link anyway. :crazy:
If we are partly hardwired for it, it might lend hope, and might even not be only a human trait.
Something to ponder.
I wasn't trying to correct your post, which was eloquent and quite on the mark, and should know better than to try to make sense so late after vodka and whatnot.

Now I am pre-coffee hangover, so it may make no sensi either :hangover:

The ancient philoshopher said you can judge the
fall of a civilization by what the content of what the citizens
consider "entertainment."

Martin Luther King, Jr and John Lennon were our
last real role models, and half the youth today
have no idea who they were...

But Paris Hilton????

Swine worship begets a swine populace.

Free Republic, a case in point.

BHN

as a cultural drug to keep their minds occupied. You know you're probably doing a good job facing reality when you don't need that drug anymore.

not necessarily in that order. Your milage may vary. Started during Ronnie Raygun's regime.

:(

Compassion left when Reagan arrived....

Nothing's significantly changed.

And very true. Thanks.

I'm trying to teach my daughters the same thing, but I'm wondering how far it will get them in this world. Just about everyone else in the world seems to be teaching their kids the value of "me ME ME."

you wimp-ass loser






sorry. couldn't resist. this is the least compassionate country I've ever been in.

in a company, school, church, any other voluntary organization, and especially in a country.

Attitudes are one thing that DO trickle down from above.

halliburton is in charge of its meals and laundry
blackwater is in charge of its security

By Nicolaus Mills. It was published in 1997 to illustrate the lack of compassion in America and how we got that way. I'd love to see a revised edition now that we've added torture to the list. He talks about how meanness has become insitutionalized. We're all affected by it, whether we know it or not. Even if we think we're entirely innocent of meanness, as soon as we turn on a Reality TV show, we're participating in it. I've read his book twice and now it's so "highlighted" and has so many notes in the margins, I don't think anyone else could possibly read it. He gets into the history of meanness in union-busting, anti-immigration movements, blaming the poor for their poverty, etc. It's an incredible read.

psychopathic,authoritarian and narcissistic personalities.That is what has got us here.We let them get away until they got big and now they run this country into the ground.
The bullies need boundaries if we do not make them adhere to boundaries they won't.These personality types do not feel emotions as we do for each other.They will not curb their abuses,it's all a game to them. So we must curb them.Do not tolerate bullies.Do not let them get away with the shit they do.



Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.
http://www.cix.co.uk/~klockstone/spath.htm

...and the objectification of people into cogs in a machine. The best way to make an Economic royalist or Libertarian gasp in horror is to say that ethics and compassion is superior to economics.

RIP, old friend.

.... the Florida vote treason and plot.

:shrug:

Anything that impedes accumulation of ever-greater wealth for the wealthy must be stamped out.