When I first heard about the Titan submersible tragedy, I was shocked and horrified. OMG, people were trapped in there and losing oxygen! I experienced sympathy claustrophobia, and I was on the edge of my seat with concern.
Then I found out that the sub wasn’t packed with scientists trying to increase our knowledge. Oh, no. Not only was it full of millionaires who had paid 250k a seat to see the Titanic wreckage, but also the company’s CEO was aboard. He knew that they had taken unforgivable shortcuts in the Jerry-rigging of this capsule, even down to using an Xbox controller to steer the thing, and that he skipped over the “minor detail” of having it safety certified. I started to feel a little less compassion. The passengers, too, should have taken one look at that Xbox bs and all the other red flags and walked away, but they didn’t. I truly believe that hubris and stupidity are directly proportionate to bank balance.
And when I thought of all the people putting their lives at risk to save these fools, I fervently hoped that if they were saved, they’d be provided with an itemized bill. I feel the same way about people who are able to get out of the path of a hurricane but choose to throw a party instead. My compassion has its limits, and it seems to be somewhere around the point where a) you bring this sh** on yourself, or b) you are so rich that you think nothing can ever go wrong for you, and so you throw caution to the wind, with no regard for how it might impact others.
It seems I was not alone in this opinion. The memes that flooded the internet would be considered tasteless under normal circumstances. People can be callous and cruel. And once it was determined that there were no survivors, the memes seemed to get even worse.
I didn’t share any of these memes, and I have no control over anyone else, but I must confess that I was feeling kind of disgusted at myself for my lack of compassion. I know if it had been scientists or children or a basket full of puppies, I’d probably be moved to tears. So what the hell is wrong with me?
The first time I heard the term “compassion fatigue” it was in an article about healthcare workers during the pandemic. It makes perfect sense that people in the helping professions, such as first responders, health care workers, and mental health professionals would be the first people to deal with this type of burnout. They are faced with trauma every day. After a while, it becomes harder to work up the energy to care. You become numb, irritable, and you feel helpless and/or depressed. You get overwhelmed and desensitized by the enormity of it all. There will always be another tragedy, and you can only do so much.
But I would take that one step further. While those on the front lines probably experience compassion fatigue more intensely than the general population, I think we all have it now to a certain extent. Since we are now capable of accessing news from around the world, and since news outlets focus on tragedy, we are getting battered from all sides. It would be impossible to build up compassion for everyone and everything. There seems to be a bottomless pit of need.
But I did feel empathy toward the victims of this disaster. I could imagine how terrified I would feel, trapped in that thing in the dark with oxygen reserves dwindling. (This was before we knew that the sub imploded, and they probably went so quickly they didn’t even know what had happened.) So why didn’t my empathy move me toward compassion? Was there some subconscious algorithm I was using to determine when to feel compassion and when not to? I needed to look deeper into this.
First, I stumbled upon compassion fade, which, in essence, means we are more capable of feeling compassion for one specific person with a tragic story than we are for thousands of anonymous ones. It’s also referred to as the “identifiable victim effect.” Unfortunately, we can be manipulated by this effect. It’s why we are increasingly taught that we have enemies.
In a world full of us versus them, those like us are perceived as good, and those like them are bad. Why do we feel that it was okay to drop a nuclear bomb on the citizens of Hiroshima? Because it stopped them. That’s also why politicians like to use “I talked to John, a steel worker in Chicago…” type stories in their speeches. They need us to feel something for those on their side. It’s also why they turn immigrants into scapegoats.
But there were only 5 people on that sub, and we were told their names. So why didn’t I feel the compassion? Maybe they should extend that study. Yes, I feel more compassion for an individual with a story. All my GoFundMe contributions attest to that. But it’s really easy to combine all tragedies into one gelatinous muck of despair, and be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of it all.
From compassion fade, I stumbled upon the concept of pseudoinefficacy. This idea probably makes up a good deal of my compassion algorithm. According to this article, people are less willing to help one person when they are made aware of the broader scope of people in need that they are not helping. I have to continually remind myself that helping “just” one person matters. It’s the only thing that breaks my inertia.
What we often forget is something that is addressed in this article. You can imagine what something must feel like for someone without actually sharing those feelings, and you can still help that person. It just might take a little more motivation when you skip that step. For example, if your child is terrified by a barking chihuahua, but you aren’t, you can still take steps to make your child feel protected from that menace without feeling the terror yourself. In fact, that may be healthier for you.
To avoid burnout, it’s important to extend compassion to yourself. Take care of you. Allow yourself some room to breathe. Then you’ll have more energy to help others to breathe.
That, of course, brings me back rather tactlessly to the sub, and my uncharitable thoughts theretoward. I must admit that my primary thought had to do with my general disdain for this trend toward adventure travel that millionaires are indulging in. How do you spend $250,000 dollars to see the Titanic when you could just as easily make a huge difference in the world for the very people you’ve used to obtain your wealth in the first place? 250k could buy a lot of mosquito nets that would save hundreds of thousands of people from mosquito-borne diseases. 250k could bring water to drought-stricken areas that are at ground zero for global warming. 250k could help end homelessness in a mid-sized town.
The shenanigans of the rich are not just self-indulgent, they’re criminal. While they’re spending 20 minutes in outer space, for example, people below them are starving. It’s hard for me to work up any sympathy toward people whom I think should be ashamed of themselves. This meme pretty much says it all (and is the first thing on earth that almost put me off pizza for life.)
So, yeah, it’s hard for me to feel compassion for some imploded billionaires. But I’m not a psychopath. I do feel sorry for the loved ones they’ve left behind. And while doing research for this post, I came upon this article that says that the 19-year-old son of a billionaire, on the vessel with his father, never wanted to go on the sub in the first place. He was pressured into it to please his father. Essentially, his life was cut short due to his father’s arrogance and the CEO’s negligence. That, at least, brings tears to my eyes.
What a perfectly preventable waste all of this was.
To learn more about the arithmetic of compassion, check out this fascinating website which includes some interesting stories about specific tragedies and our responses to them. It’s a site I’ll be visiting again and again. I suspect it will inspire future posts on this blog, so stay tuned.
Like this quirky little blog? Then you’ll enjoy my book! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
Leave a Reply