Compassion Fatigue

Our society faces a real, and threatening problem, that has been growing faster and faster throughout the years. It’s called “Compassion Fatigue”, and it basically means that with the constant development of media and information, and the excruciating bombing of images and news which we receive every day, (mainly), through television, our eyes, brain and eventually our selves, got used to see the most horrible things, with the ability to carry on with our lives, without even thinking about others problems, or feeling almost any compassion during the 24 hours of our days.

It’s not really something that the main public wants to be, but most of us watch, and listen, the most horrible news and still, we are capable to change the channel without making any expression of compassion, understanding, or the urge to do something to change what is bad in this world. We see every day on the news, stories about kids in Africa and their miserable lives, murders, corruption, images of war and this stuff is shown so many times, that our brain got used to it. Just like a few decades ago, if a man saw the leg of a woman, he would jerk off for a fucking month. Nowadays, seeing a naked woman is something banal. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the real problem. Showing what is happening in the world, or showing some tits and penis is not wrong. What I believe it’s wrong, is to put censorship in the middle of those things.

Trying to make people more comfortable when they watch strong images, is going to do even worst. If you want to compassion fatigue to end, end censorship. Censorship, makes something strong, into something banal, that we don’t give importance. If you want to show the consequences of a war, show the dead bodies, show the blood, and the mutilated faces, show the raping, show the executions, show the cursing, show everything. Only that way, people will pay attention, only that way people will find new things, will change their ways of thinking.
Only this way people will want to change the world.  If they puke with disgust, even better, they will remember it. If they get “traumatized”, they will never forget it.
If you want to shake this world, shake the people too. Show them what you can only see if you have a strong stomach. Make people cry and have nightmares about those who suffer every single fucking day!

Show and say everything, maybe people will give everything too. 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

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4 thoughts on “Compassion Fatigue

  1. I have read “Shame on the media” or shame on us? « JRFibonacci’s blog: partnering with reality. And I have one simple thing to say. It’s a mixed and confusing article. It mixes things that don’t have anything to do with each other. I will explain.
    First of all when I am taking about Television, I am not talking about entertainment programs like in that article, I am talking about the news which have the obligation to tell us the truth, always the truth. It’s their duty as informers of the public. The example of entertainment programs and radio shows has nothing to do with it, because they are for a specific kind of audience, but the news of the world aren’t for a certain kind of audience, they are for everybody, that is what journalism is. Telling and showing the truth.

    “Governments keep secrets, like classified weapons research. Businesses keep secrets, too, like trade secrets. You keep secrets, too, like passwords to your computer or your debit card.” Well, again this is a mixed up opinion. Again, our codes, and I repeat OUR stuff belongs to us and no one else. The government belongs to all of us. It’s their obligation not to have secrets to their people, and for me that’s a crime. Basically what this article says over here is that, all of us have secrets so why are we so upset with the government secrets? That’s the same thing as saying you don’t care about corruption, organized wars and lies that can result in wars, and millions of deaths. Your issues are yours, the government issues are public. They belong to the people, because that is what a government is. Learn not to mix up things.

    The pornography issue is again, in this article a big fucking confusion. Child pornography is wrong, because I bet the kids don’t agree to appear on the Internet having sex or other things, because most of the times they are forced to do it. General pornography is a business, and all of the involved know and agreed to share it with others.
    Now I will get to a very controversial issue. If by some reason my child actually consented to put a let’s suppose naked picture of herself online, I would honestly be very calm and cool about it. And I will explain why. It’s the duty of the parents to say what’s right or what’s wrong. But it’s the duty of the children to agree with it, or not.. So, if my child had made the choice by herself to put a picture naked online, I would only say, now you will live with the consequences. I have shown you how this world works, it’s now up to you, how will you behave on it. Simple as that. Learn with mistakes, it’s the best thing you can do.

    This article is really bad structured because it mixes personal choices with public information that everyone should have the right to know. This article is a total fucking paradox.

  2. mephitic says:

    Interesting article, but if you show everything won’t people eventually become desensitised? Any then want more………….

    • It’s a good point of view actually, but if you ask the war journalists if they will ever forget what they have seen, they will probably say never, they will never forget it. Because they have access to the most raw and uncensored shit of humanity.
      I believe that if we were able to see everything, it would be such a tremendous shock, every time you would see it, you couldn’t ever forget it. And maybe it would give you the final urge to change things.
      And I don’t think people would get tired of the truth, that’s all we want after all.
      It’s a really good point, and I can’t be 100% sure that everything will go as I think it will, but only trying it out will give us some answers…

      You can always learn something from mistakes…

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