[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

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".

....hmmm, it's impossible to generalise with these things though because there are often so many things with them..yes, we do 'limit', we have to limit ..it's not a conscious limiting though but we self protect by limiting and if we didn't self protect, then our instincts know that we wouldn't ever be effective to anyone...and yes relating to things ourselves is somewhere that we find our empathy from because we understand more how we would feel in a situation...but it's also 'layers' as well...those layers are made up of things in our own lives, our own personal worries etc and maybe those of friends and people we know personally as well..and then news stories and sad things going on in the world as well...there will be a point and it could be just the smallest of things really, when that 'last layer' would become too much so we have to start limiting our absorbing of the sadder things and with that also, we have to start to build layers of more positive, happier things to balance it all, to self preserve...but those more positive things are not necessarily 'happy/heart warming' news stories either...because we can also create those balances ourselves even out of the sad things we're absorbing...like, with Nepal as I mentioned..?..(which is the same with any situation..)...can we be pro-active in any way..?..yes because we can concentrate on survivor's and the aid needed by them..organise or take part in fundraising things that would provide aid..donate.../we've absorbed the tragedy in a negative layer but we're then balancing that with a positive...the same with the image of the Syrian child..the image instigated a positive because now more funding is being given to allow more refugees a new life...with this story/the crane collapsing and loss of life..we still feel the same empathy, we still relate in exactly the same way..but can we be proactive in any way..?..maybe, but it's not so easy to see how we can..people have died, people are grieving..we're pretty much helpless to that..we can't so anything for those families/friends so our focus/our natural focus concentrates more on the things in life we feel we can in someway make a difference, we concentrate and focus on the 'in control' bit and anything we can do...I never actually saw any image of that child other than to see a blanket over him because it wasn't an image I needed to see, so made no difference at all to how I felt and how I feel about the migrant crisis..many other people have probably not seen that image either..the only reality it brings and the 'triggered reaction' of importance in terms of making a difference to the migrants is that it's created more to be done...