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
Thinking the Truth 