Postby deb1960 » Sun Feb 03, 2019 10:32 am
Things are good re this tech thing but I'm not confident about it.
As you say, empathy is less common now. In Britain we are less of a community in family, living places, workplace, local churches. These have largely died out in my lifetime. With greater wealth comes greater freedom, I think. And so we can enjoy our big tellys, our computer gadgets and have less need of people. This attitude of only having one life and so enjoy it is stronger than you can imagine. I think too, though I may be wrong, that increasing atheism in Britain can change the nature of groups and attitudes towards the vulnerable.
As you can see this is a subject I find interesting. Empathy is crucial in life but
the loveliest of people often feel concern but find (truly or not) they can't act. Those of us who show empathy become frustrated and angry (I do).
I imagine each person in a hot air balloon with sandbags holding them down. Each sandbag contains our moral values. We need to get higher and so we throw out just a bit of values. But we want to get higher still. We would love to help and we're sorry but we have to get rid of quite a lot of value. We're higher but not as high as him or her and out go many more etc
Some of us are 'stuck' with our morality and struggle to rise. We bump along. If we're lucky we keep good health and enjoy life. But some of us are unlucky. It was empathy that caused my breakdown 17 years ago. My life has never been the same since and sometimes I wish I was a hard hearted bastard, high enough to enjoy my life.
I know I've gone on and I hope you don't mind.
God bless
Debs xx