[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

.. I did see and read this story and didn't post it because I waited to see if it was posted by anyone else..and yes, tragic but it's no cultural thing or racial thing or anything else that may be implied...we cannot, none of us can..take on and absorb all tragedy, deaths and sadness in the world, otherwise emotionally..?..it would probably kill us as that's just too much ...I made a thread of the Nepal Earthquake during the election as well and when I preferred to have it kept 'non political related' in terms of aid getting through etc ..it was hardly posted in...is that because we are all cold people nd lacking of any compassion for those in other countries.../no, it's because a general election in a country is something very important to everyone who lives there...and that was the focus at the time...it's really silly to infer that 'we don't care'....

That's the point though, we can't take on the emotional burden of empathy for the entire world - we would all go insane - and so we limit ourselves to feeling the most empathy for those who are the most like ourselves, who we can relate to, who we can think "that could have been me / my family" about.

The image of the boy on the beach suddenly triggered a huge reaction in people. People who know children have been dying in this way for months / years. Why? In my opinion, in large part because it was a very clear image of a very normal looking little boy. A boy who could be the child of anyone you know, who could have gone to nursery with your own children... Different to what they might have imagined a "little muslim" to look like, I.e. "foreign", not like us.

People can say it's a matter of distance but it isn't always. It's a fact that the public and media here, in general, makes a bigger fuss about tragedies in places like the US or Australia than they do about places geographically closer, but "more different".