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The other day I was walking around the city and I noticed something that happens every day: people don’t seem to like each other very much. We cut each other off in our cars, we push each other around on the bus, we give each other dirty looks when we think someone is “out to get us”—we just don’t seem to get along very well.
Why is that?
It got me thinking about poverty for some reason, and how heartless so many of us are when we talk about people that don’t have enough money to make it through the day.
Politicians (and citizens) pound their fists and bellow out that giving handouts is wrong. TV personalities call poor people lazy and tell them they should just “get a job already!”
Many of them have two jobs, and it’s just not enough. There are people out there doing the very best they can—some are working harder than many of us have eve worked—and still there just isn’t enough money at the end of the day.
Then we excoriate them for using their credit cards and getting into debt. What else are they supposed to do? If college-educated people fall into the debt trap all the time, why would we be so harsh on people who barely finished high school and fall into these traps too?
Wealthy people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars (sometimes millions) complain that they’re being taxed more than poor people and that it’s not fair. Why should they be punished for making more money? Why don’t poor people just work harder, like they did?
Why can’t we put ourselves in their shoes for a minute to see how terrible and hopeless it must feel to not see a light at the end of the tunnel?
Where has all the sympathy gone?
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Comments
04.01.09
Here's a look from the inside:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
As for where the sympathy has gone, it's because of people like Gordon Gekko:
"The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much."
04.01.09
I agree that sympathy is sorely lacking, but it is not just the rich that are to blame. Check out this story (about a Hedge Fund Manager that is now delivering pizzas):
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=7111098&page=1
Then look at the 500+ comments, many of them from people who feel that the guy got what he deserved. An example:
Boo Hoo Hoo, Poor Ken, he now lives in a run down mansion and the benzo needs and oil change. And the poor wife has to work now... What horror! This news story was pathetic. 20/20 made this sound like it was a catastrophe.. Why doesn't he sell the jet skis and the the walk-in closet full of junk and get a small house, send the kids to public school like the rest of Americans.
Sympathy is something that should go both ways. Suffering comes in many forms and accepting that everyone, rich or poor, may suffer in ways we cannot imagine. We are all human beings and deserve empathy and sympathy in good measure.
04.02.09
I agree Dave, it's becoming an endangered species no matter where you turn.
Sad.
04.02.09
It seems like sympathy has been replaced by schadenfreude. That when bad things happen to someone, or if someone is in a bad situation, that people take some kind of perverse joy in their misfortune, as if they deserved it in some way for being who they were, where they were, or for what they were doing. I believe that these people see this as some kind of divine retribution being visited on them to right the scales of justice. Whatever happened to the concept of tempering justice with mercy? Apparently it's gone the way of the passenger pigeon.
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