Compassion Fatigue?

May be so, but I fear that there will be a LOT more earthquakes yet to come for the poor Indonesians, it just seems like that there is no end in sight for them, I am worried that a 'catastrophic' quake will take place in the near future, possibly swallowing a few islands along the way and killing a few millions.

It's a very, very scary situation over there...

 

I'm following it very closely. I've been off work for a few days and won't go back until Wednesday. (Wife had surgery). I use people at work as a gauge of general public interest so I don't know if you are correct. I agree there doesn't seem to be much interest among Clutchfans members yet. Compassion fatigue may have something to do with it. My guess is that when people realized a tsunami wasn't involved their interest waned fast.

 

Here's something else the references the idea of compassion fatigue:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/05/28/coverstory.tm/index.html


The deadliest war in the world

Congo's simmering conflict has killed 4 million


Some wars go on killing long after they end.

In Congo, a nation of 63 million people in the heart of Africa, a peace deal signed more than three years ago was supposed to halt a war that drew in belligerents from at least eight different countries, producing a record of human devastation unmatched in recent history.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) estimates that 3.9 million people have died from war-related causes since the conflict in Congo began in 1998, making it the world's most lethal conflict since World War II.

By conventional measures, that conflict is over. Congo is no longer the playground of foreign armies; the country's first real election in 40 years is scheduled to take place this summer, and international troops have arrived to keep peace.

Meanwhile, mining firms have returned, and cell phone companies -- particularly welcome in a country that has just a few thousand fixed lines serving more than 60 million people -- are doing a booming business.

But the suffering of Congo's people continues. Fighting persists in the east, where rebel holdouts loot, rape and murder. The Congolese army, which was meant to be both symbol and protector in the reunited country, has cut its own murderous swath, carrying out executions and razing villages.

Even more deadly are the byproducts of war, the scars left by years of brutality that disfigure Congo's society and infrastructure. The country is plagued by bad sanitation, disease, malnutrition, corruption and dislocation. Routine and treatable illnesses have become weapons of mass destruction.

In many respects, Congo remains as broken, volatile and dangerous as ever, which is to say, among the very worst places on Earth. And yet Congo rarely makes daily news headlines, and its troubles are often low on international donors' lists of places to help.

There are various explanations for the neglect. Perhaps the global reservoir of wealth and good will only runs so deep. Perhaps the attention and outrage being spent to stop another African tragedy, the genocide in Darfur, has left the world too exhausted to take on Congo's.

But a choice like that comes with a cost.

Congo represents the promise of Africa as much as its misery. Its fertile fields and tropical forests cover an area bigger than California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas combined.

Its soils are packed with diamonds, gold, copper, tantalum (known locally as coltan and used in electronic devices such as cell phones and laptop computers) and uranium. The waters of its mighty river could one day power the continent. And yet because Congo is so rich in resources, its problems, when left to fester, tend to suck in its neighbors in a vortex of exploitation and chaos.

And so fixing Congo is essential to fixing Africa.

Says Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch: "If you want peace in Africa, then you need to deal with the biggest country right at its heart."

The task is enormous. Over the past year, Time reporters who visited the worst hit areas in the east of the country found much of it in ruins. Roads and railway lines have washed away or simply disappeared into the jungle. Hospitals and health clinics have been destroyed.

Electricity, for those lucky enough to receive it, is patchy. Refugees fleeing fighting between government troops and rebels talk of beheadings, rapes, massacres and villages being torched.

The gripping stories from Congo, coming eight years after the start of fighting, sound eerily familiar to the reports of atrocities committed in Darfur. In that sense they are powerful admonishments to those who believe the West's responsibilities in Darfur may have been lifted with the signing of a peace agreement in early May: Congo's warring parties, too, say they are abiding by a peace deal, monitored by U.N. troops.

But the dying continues. Congo provides tragic proof that in some places, peace and war can look a lot alike.

 

no, they don't have enough oil for us to care.

 

they have among the largest reserves of oil in the world.

 

i think it's getting a lot of attention here.

the pictures remove those barriers, i believe, anyway. when you see a child suffering and his mom there beside him, you forget all of the political, cultural and economic stuff. all of that goes out the window.

 

Compassion fatigue happens. This is the reason that we long ago as a society stop caring about the health care misery and poverty of our own population. It is the reason that private charity as
a substitute for government services fails.

 

When something happens over and over in the same place over a period of time...people become more and more de-sensitized to it. Indonesia is right in the heartland of volcanic and tectonic activity. It's a a bad place to be. It makes California looks like Disneyland. The media coverage also play a factor in garnering donations by how much they cover it. The divide created between the West and Islam is also a factor. I think there is just too much uncertainty and stuff going on in the world. There's not enough caring going on and, rather, too much division. The world is a f-ed up place. One can ask why the world doesn't function more logically. In truth, logic has little to do with how the world operates. The world operates much more in the way of greed than compassion. There's too much "me, myself, and I" going on. Then, the sh*t hits the fan and people crash down into reality. When it hits close to home, then it becomes our problem. Otherwise, it's someone else's problem. On occassion, the scale of a disaster can overcome such divisions and viewpoints. Simple things like reality video taken by someone on the scene during the tragedy can play a factor in how people react as far as compassion to the event. For example, the tsunami video taken by tourists I think was huge in getting people to care because they were seeing it first hand while it happened. They felt more affected by it. This kind of impact is felt much more than seeing video of what is left after something has happened. People respond to seeing people react to an event as it happens.

In summary, I think there are a lot of factors in determing how much any particular person "cares" about a castrophic, tragic event. Each person responds based on how they have developed their own stimuli to society and world events. It's quite clear to me, though, that the more tragedy, war, and whatever else that happens...the more de-sensitized people become to said events should they repeat. I think if the world ever gets on the same page...then compassion and caring really gets a lift rather than taking a back seat.

 

Now, I care.

 

i wouldn't use this website as some sort of weathervane (is that how you spell it?) for US thought.

 

At least people aren't making light of it like that deadly typhoon that hit SE Asia...and a DJ in NYC made a song laughing at them, telling them all to drown...

 

In addition to the compassion fatigue, American Idol, Lost and 24 are done for the season. American's are just too drained to care about a few deaths on the other side of the world.

Wake me up when the next white girl goes missing.

 

Today was Memorial day. I didn't see a Memorial Day thread posted.

Are we, as Americans, too tired to remember the men and women who protect our country, so we can live the life that we live?

The life of watching ****ty television like American Idol, and Paris Hilton takes a trip around the country, and Bug Eaters.

 

I think I've probably seen one episode of 24. Wasn't impressed. I'll probably see the first season on DVD someday, and try to discover what the fuss is about.

I've been following the earthquake. Indonesia has had a string of natural disasters in the modern era, along with a very long history of them going back as far as records can go. I read a good book about Krakatoa a while back. Yet another one, and Indonesians should be very worried that they will have more to come.

To tell you the truth, Sishir, I think Americans are still stunned by our own recent disasters (Katrina taking out one of our most historically significant and storied cities qualifies as stunning), as well as the earlier ones in Indonesia, along with those you mentioned as well. Iraq, the crisis with Iran, and so on. I don't think any "compassion fatigue," if it exists, has anything to do with their religious background, which is really historically diverse.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Look in Hangout.



Keep D&D Civil.