Status-quo

The idea that people in the past felt no empathy for those killed in natural disasters is simply incorrect. Here's a description of reactions to the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/lisbon/

Of course it is true that people died sooner in the past than they do today, for a variety of reasons. In many societies, half of the children do not read age five. So people were more used to young lives being cut short. Despite that fact, natural disasters (and plagues, diseases, and other causes of death) were viewed with empathy.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

The idea that people in the past felt no empathy for those killed in natural disasters is simply incorrect. Here's a description of reactions to the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/lisbon/

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Wow, I never said anything like that. I simply implied that they didn't blubber over it for weeks on end the way we do. Some - ahem, most - of the reactions to these disasters I see now are absolutely ridiculous. Celebrity telethons, Anderson Cooper staring into the camera with an overly stern face, round-the-clock text messages asking for my money, religious nuts saying its the end of times...

...God people, get a life already.

People moaned endlessly about the Lisbon earthquake. Some historians think it was a key reason for a move toward atheisim (why would a benificient God have visited such a disaster on innocents?).

My point: although we are more aware of depression, anxiety, stress, and theatrical whining when it happens in our own era, people were much the same in the past as they are today. I'll grant that without TV, the reactions of the mourners were not recorded -- and that with the proliferation of cable channels, TV stations need to fill airspace, and sometimes grasp at anything. However, Christian preachers have been predicting the "end times" for a couple of millenia now.

One can empathise with the pain of others, but really what good does it do? Am I not like God, full of empathy but little else? How can I help the weak and the sick? Am I not powerless? Am I not merely me? Is suffering not endless? Should I rush out like Don Quixote upon my steed and do battle with the world? Where's the hope in a futile rushing about? Can I not think small? Do I need to think bigger? Do I need to be a fool? Can I not think smart? Can I not do more by doing less? Are we not all mortal? Is the world not a stage and I have a part in it? Should I not play my part well? Must I be a mechanical, a poor player fretting his time away? Should I not live but die a fruitless fool? Am I a fool?

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Originally Posted by G L Wilson

Am I a fool?

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Hmmm.

I’ll grant that there’s an aura of theatricality about some of the empathetic grief. People like to cry over Princess Diana’s death, just as they pay money to cry over Ol’ Yeller’s death. It allows us the fun of an emotional response, without the pain that comes from real grief (as when a good friend or family member dies).

As to whether our empathy does any good – the closer the tragedy is to us, the more likely we can do some good. We are more likely to be able to protect ourselves from terrorist attacks in the U.S. (if we are Americans) than in Mumbai (which most Indians still call “Bombay”).

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

People moaned endlessly about the Lisbon earthquake.

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lol how were people moaning about it before mass communications? You're telling me people in Massachusetts were fretting about...you know what nevermind. This is pointless lol.

Yes, I (and the link from the U. of Cal.) am telling you that people in Massachusetts were probably moaning about the disaster in Lisbon. Why is that so hard to comprehend?

From the website I cited earlier:

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The extensive number of renderings of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake found throughout Europe demonstrate the traumatic effect the disaster had on the continent. Depictions of the Lisbon earthquake were created, copied, and widely distributed and discussed throughout all of southern, western and central Europe. Whether created by the new desire to investigate, record, and understand the earthquake in natural rather than strictly metaphysical terms, or created by the more sensational desire to report on human calamity, these depictions indicate that the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 represents a watershed event in European history.

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Or, how about this link:

http://hess.metapress.com/content/tn14161r6477q554/

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The reaction to the Lisbon earthquake in newspaper articles, earthquake-sermons and pamphlets printed in the New World appears unanimous: earthquakes are caused by God, although he may act through natural causes. Benjamin Franklin did not formulate any theory and John Winthrop seemed unable to separate science from religion in his lecture on earthquakes, although he emphasized natural causes, as generally accepted in Europe. An anonymously published article on agitations of the sea and related earthquakes in November 1755 proposed an alternative to fire and vapors for countries without volcanic activity. The author, Dr. John Perkins, physician in Boston, proposed that earthquakes may be caused by settling of land in mountains. He argued that the upper parts of lands consist of harder and less pliable material than the lower parts which are yielding and water-soaked. Underground waters carry away parts of this lower substance and the resulting caverns collapse when the overlying heavier material sinks into the lower one. Displacement of this material may spread toward the ocean thus transmitting earthquakes of great intensity to the ocean basin; alternatively the spreading may be stopped by an obstacle and cause the rising of coastal areas. Perkins found alleged proofs of such raised areas in Pine-Plain and Hampstedt-Plain on Long Island. His contribution is important and should be included among the early earthquake theories presented in the British colonies of America.

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However, I agree that "this is pointless".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8K8Hj8bxE

I'm sorry I ever defended you, Prickly Pete.

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

I'm sorry I ever defended you, Prickly Pete.

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prickly_pete is perfectly capable of defending himself. Why would he need your help?

prickly_pete is GL Wilson's sock puppet (that's my theory, at any rate).

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

prickly_pete is GL Wilson's sock puppet (that's my theory, at any rate).

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I don't know who you insult more by that allegation.

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Originally Posted by thebagman

Mass opinion gave us communism, it gave us Hitler and the popular sport of witch-hunting. This is a weird question but does it seem to anyone else as though the more people you get together the dumber everyone seems to get?

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People also organise in groups to fight for civil and labor rights, to fight invading armies, to participate in charity events to help countries afflicted with natural disasters, to complain about the government, to help each other during crises. We're not really that horrible. Sometimes we're just not strong enough to have our group voice reach the ears of the individuals who hold most of the power in their hands.

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Let's think about it! Cults, riots, wars, anything religious, is there anything we can do in a group that in a intellectual or scientific way advances mankind? Why has most of the pioneering work done in these fields by one man (or woman) or a single scientist in opposition of a much larger group? Is mass opinion just a reinforcement of the status-quo?

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Outside a few mediatic cases like like Galileo and Darwin, do most scientists and thinkers really work in opposition to society? Most thinkers and scientists are reclusive people doing work that doesn't attract the attention or the wrath of society. I don't think scientists who discover new butterfly species, or who catalogue new types of moss, for instance, really have stirred the ire of the populace. What happens is that once in a while there's a big idea that clashes with ideas deeply rooted in a culture.

Although Galileo and Darwin are now proven right, I think it's totally understandable that they were persecuted. I mean, if I were a religious person and my entire worlview was founded on the fact that the Earth does not move, as written by men who received the word from the true God, the maker of the world; and some scientist told me everything I believed in was wrong, of course I'd be upset! If I weren't upset that everything I believed in, that gave meaning to my existence, was wrong, then I'd be a fool. My entire existence would be a lie. Of course I wouldn't accept that.

The moral of the story, however, is that society did change to accomodate Galileo's discoveries. It changed little by little, as changes in moral views and customs must change. One can't expect to uproot an entire society overnight. That'd be traumatic. That'd be doing what communism tried to do in Russia, turn a feudal society into a modern worker's utopia by demolishing the existing society in one swoop. That never works. People always need a sense of continity, to feel that there's something they can lean on for support. That is the status quo, which is nothing more than the culture that exists around us like the air we breathe. We can't live without the status quo, we can't always be modern. Without status quo we'd have nothing to orient our lives.

Without the status quo, we would have right to guide us.

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Originally Posted by thebagman

If someone is doing the bashing by all means retaliate. But that was not what her post was about.

"What happens to people that I do not personally know or care about means nothing to me.

If someone else's existence does come to interfere with me, or with someone I care about, then I will do what I feel needs to be done to eliminate the problem.

All my empathy and sympathy goes towards animals. I do not much care for other human beings if they are not within the small circle of people that personally mean something to me."

You don't find a problem with this?

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I think this is a natural mind-set. And unless you spend a fair amount of your time volunteering and donate most of your disposable income (if you have any) to charity, you have no right to jump on someone else for expressing such views.

If Dark Muse actually hurt other people, if these views she expressed lead to others being harmed, then you would definitely have a point.

How many people actually go out of their way to help random strangers? Where I live people don't even pick up hitch-hikers anymore.

At least she is honest. Most people, despite a lot of talk to the contrary, conduct themselves in a manner completely in accord with the sentiments Dark Muse expressed.

If it was otherwise then every newscast would crush the heart of every viewer and people would not spend lavishly on consumer items while droves of their fellows sleep on the streets and starve.