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When Empathy is All About You
From an
editorial in the Camera today:
There's something fraudulent about this eagerness to latch onto the grief of others and embrace the idea that we, too, have been victimized. This trivializes the pain felt by those who have actually lost something and pathologizes normal reactions to tragedy. Empathy is good, but feeling shocked and saddened by the shootings doesn't make us traumatized or special — these feelings make us normal.
Some good points about vicarious trauma.
19 comments:
While I see the point that we should not personalize the private pain of others who are directly affected by tragedies such as the one at VTI, I disagree that such events are not impacting people far away and contributing to a certain level of trauma.
We are exposed to an exponentially higher level of violence in the media than those who lived 100 or 50 or even 20 years ago. Abraham Lincoln wasn't shot on live television. Ronald Reagan was. The twin towers were attacked and collapsed on live television. And many of us got to see a lifesize photograph of a mass murderer pointing a gun directly at us in our driveways last week whether we wanted to or not. And whether we wanted our children to or not.
To some extent, I hope we are disturbed by what we see. The other option is to be hardened and immune to it. That is more my fear, that our younger generations don't understand the reality, and finality, of violence.
Empathy is a good thing.
Go here for more good information on children and media violence: http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/facts_vlent.shtml.
I can appreciate your comments Chris. The reason the editorial resonated with me was my impression of news anchors, commentators and others in the media - I haven't met a "real" person yet who seems to go this far - over-dramatizing how traumatic this is for everyone in our country, simply because it happened, regardless of your level of connection to the victims.
I agree with the distinction being made between the grief and shock of those directly affected and the rest of us who are witnesses from afar. Plus I agree with the implied asserion that there is a continuum of tragic events happening in the world, and gigantic vigils for random acts of a psychopath are superficial in their impact. A sense of solidarity for a moment in the face of random evil is okay, however I agree with the editorial that there are other more calculated, more widespread and intentional acts that don't receive the same outpouring of shared grief.
I found that site link you listed didn't work - however the root website link does: http://www.mediafamily.org.
I've found another interesting column on the repercussions of the Virginia Tech shootings: the notion that in our multi-cultural society such tragedies reverberate around the world as "local" news, as victims come from various countries.
From the Slate article by Anne Applebaum: "This new level of internationalism is something to consider in our national debates about immigration, education, or even foreign policy—not as an argument for or against anything, but simply as an existing fact that not all of us have properly internalized. It's also something to consider when we ponder America's oddly lopsided relationship with the rest of the world. As you read this article, America's gun-control laws are being debated around the world, America's mental-health system is being analyzed in a dozen languages. America's local news is now the world's local news. But somehow, I don't think that our knowledge of the rest of the world is growing at a similarly rapid pace."
Read the rest here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2164828/fr/rss/
Having spent my formative years overseas, I experienced first hand how ethnocentric our country's media is. We need to perceive ourselves in more of global context, then perhaps our national politicians will make less disastrous and arrogant choices. The tragic events portrayed on TV news pale in comparison as a source of desensitizing our children to violence compared to the cartoons on TV. The heroes our children identify with rarely if ever resolve their differences in a non-violent manner, but the consequences of that violence are downplayed or non existent. The seeds of violence are sown by the media long before they result in tragedy.
There are lessons to be learned from events such as VT. Like it or not, media outlets are our primary source of information. They are responsible for providing unbiased and accurate accounts of events that take place. We, along with members of the media, process the information which can result in positive benefits, decline or indifference.
Yes there are lessons, but the media "filters" what they provide to us and I fail to see how video of a man pointing a gun at a camera is important for any of us to see. Sure, the existence of the video and a description of its contents might be "important," but actually showing us the video isn't necessary. Nor is a half page photograph of the most shocking frame of said video.
I also agree with Frank that "kid TV" isn't much better than the general media.
I didn't like looking at the picture of the VT shooter pointing a gun right at me either. I turned the paper inside out so I would not see it again. Nor did I like seeing the footage of people jumping from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Or starving people at Auschwitz or the horrendous conditions at refugee camps in Africa. But the images are real, the stories there, uncomfortable, undoctored truths.
For those of you who have a life, you may not know that NBC has been sending out its #1 anchorman, Brian Williams, on damage control duty. He has been on Letterman and yesterday on Oprah (according to a clip on AOL).
Cutting through the spin, the release was about ratings and money. NBC's ratings have been dropping. Newspapers have been announcing cuts in staff due to drops in ad revenue. Of course, viewers and readers can turn the TV off and drop their subscriptions to the papers. NBC and its sponsors have been threatened with boycotts. The only benefit I can see is that it put Anna Nicole Smith off the news for now. The big news this week is the rantings of Alex Baldwin towards his 12 year-old daughter.
The news media has always had an agenda and has pushed it. There was a time that sometimes the news was separated from opinion. But not often. The Spanish American War was concocted by two media giants engaged in a major circulation battle. The Maine was not sunk by a Spanish mine. Even Walter Cronkeit admitted he was biased in what he put on the air. Or just read the Daily Camera.
The media bombardment on kids these days is about money. Kids have it. Marketeers want it. If violence sells, you get more violence. In my younger days, the violence was there but in black and white. Blood/bleeding was not allowed. To get color you went to the double feature at the movies with five cartoons in between. Popeye was bashing Bluto, Wile E. Coyote blew himself up at least three time per episode, Moe was sticking Curley in the eye, and G.I. Joe was blasting tanks and pillboxes. Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey, Matt Dillon, Paladin, etc. always nailed the bad guy with their .45s. Dirty Harry had his .357. Even John Wayne got killed a couple of times.
Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in black and white on live TV on a Saturday morning. I saw it.
Now its worse just because it is everywhere. Saving Private Ryan pushed the limt forward. And don't take your kids to see "300". Rap and hip hop are out of control, even though Guns and Roses was just as bad 20 years ago.
Campuses being vulnerable to attack is not new. (One of my classmates used to have a .38 tucked in his belt. He was a dope pusher on the side.) Bombing of Federal buildings is not new. People getting killed by letter bombs is not new. Living under the threat of nuclear annihilation is not new (Cuban missile crisis). The Cold War lasted 50 years.
And let's not forget the reality of the WW I, WW II, the Korean War, etc. The previous generation went through a lot more than we have. The Baby Boomers are their kids.
In my trips to Europe, I escaped three bombings. After getting off a flight to Albuquergue, the plane was hijacked to Cuba. One of my neighbors back east was one of the hostages taken by Iran back in the Jimmy Carter days.
VT is a wake up call, again. But we have a habit of either going into denial or just forgetting, hoping it will not happen again, at least to us or any one we know.
Those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it.
Who's history? Written by whom?
Violence in the media may be justified because it is real, or because it may have some educational or deterrent effect, but ask yourself why such titillating coverage of violence never seems to have this effect.
Could it be that violence does breed violence? If I had to design a system of indoctrination for a culture of violence, where there would always be a need for guns and armed conflict on every possible level, I couldn't do a better job.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992----02.htm
I don't understand - What is VT a wake-up call to? Bogus media? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm asking.
Can we ever presume to weed out nutjobs from our lives? I don't think so; I don't know what kind of sweeping changes I would make if I were king that would have prevented the tragic scenarios mentioned before. Everything you can point to in the VT incident that led to the guy's meltdown is tangential, aggregate and from a "culture of ______". Although our "leaders" are great at reacting to random violence with sweeping restrictions on our privacy and freedoms. More secure, indeed.
Maybe I represent a small subset, but I've read very little about the Viginia Tech shootings since the day after they happened. Other than headlines, I don't know what Cho said, and I don't have a detailed forensic knowledge of the shooting.
The culture of violence seems like a very real thing to me, when it is so accepted and rewarded. Cho knew what he was doing when he sent his message to the mass media. We have definitely heard what Cho wanted us to hear.
Whatever that was...
I guess my feeling is that people can choose to feel traumatized by gratuitous displays of violence, or they can find some explanation for it.
Cho killed 32 people, then killed himself. Why should I even consider what the guy had to say?
Well, if I had young children (empty nester), I'd be paying attention and seeing what could be done.
Our schools, elementary, high school, and colleges are vunerable to this type of slaughter. They always have been but now the cat is out of the bag. There were at least 15 copycat threats the next day. Columbine started the trend and the number of incidents increase every day. A teenage girl was killed by a manica in her school just recently here in Colorado.
VT is now the worst. Next year there will be another that breaks this sad "record". So parents and authorities can demand more security or decide that limiting personal freedoms outweigh the risk. VT had no surveillance cameras.
Last week there was a study discussed on the tube by researchers who interviewed young people in prison who had murdered parents, teachers, and classmates. The researchers compiled a list of the top ten reasons given for their crimes. At the top was bullying in school. No surprise as it was a prime cause of Columbine. Isolation was another, no adult to mentor or look out for the young person. Cho fit these symptoms.
Cho was ruled to be mentally ill by the courts a year or two ago. He was allowed to be an outpatient and the results of treatment where never followed up. However because of the HIIPA laws which guard patient privacy, his mental health status was never reported to the FBI. So when the normal background check was performed as he purchased his guns legally, his record of mental illness was not in the system to prevent it. Now the Virginia laws are being changed.
BVSD got voter approval to spend millions on buildings. It did not ask for one penny for security.
Fast forward ten years. What type of havoc will be happening every day in our schools? And how often?
So let the debate begin as to whether personal freedoms need to be restricted in order to improve school safety? What would the 32 victims at VT say?
I guess my point is that the bigger deal we make out of violence, the more enticing it becomes for someone who has no other outlet or frame of reference. I doubt that public failure to obsess over the details of mass murder or failure to publish the psychopathic, misanthropic rants of killers as an above-the-fold story is going to cause more violence.
This thread is about media coverage, and when I can’t even let my small children watch supposedly G-rated network programming for fear that a CSI clip, loaded with guns and death and violence, will air during the ads, that gives me reason to be skeptical about how helpful the press and television will be in any sort of healing or shift in the culture. If I have been educated, in any sense of the word, by constant exposure to images and acts of violence, someone please tell me how.
This thread was not really about safety until Councilor Bensman made the link. Would surveillance have made any sort of difference in the VT shootings or any other random act of violence? We could argue about whether the liberty costs of surveillance are too great, but the real question may be how effective passive security can be at all, even with Big Brother watching at all times. And, other than surveillance, more active police measures may also be ineffective without becoming so pervasive that it completely compromises the value of freedom.
Of course those of us with children and empty nesters alike care to find a solution. I simply cannot accept that the media is doing anything to help us by feeding on violence.
Remember the plans to cut down on violence in schools by arming teachers? When we become indoctrinated into a culture of violence, insanity starts to sound reasonable.
In the VT situation, the gun man killed two students in a dormatory. Then two hours elapsed before the gun man entered a classroom building and killed 30 others. Authorities believe the package of tapes and manifestos was mailed to NBC during that two hours. Could surveillance have helped prevent the second killings?
The administration there is also being criticized for not shutting down the school after the first incident. So this tragic situation will be studied for a long term.
Many laws on the books are a result of tragedies. Fire laws are a good example of that. Many OSHA laws as well. Now the reporting of mental health conditions will be scrutinized.
As for the media, it feeds viewers violence because viewers watch it and ratings translate into ad revenue. It is perverse but that's the way it works. Somehow out of the mess does come some laws that work and changes in the public behavior (decrease in smoking).
As for arming teachers, a Holocost survivor, aged 72. blocked the door to his classroom while his students escaped. He was killed.
Like I said, who speaks for the victims?
P.S. By the way, whoever is quoting Chomsky - give me a break.
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."
And that's Professor Chomsky to all M.I.T. plebes! Let's have some respect for authority.
I was hanging out with Ben Affleck in those days, living in Southie, and beating up the townies. I also was dating the 'cliffies and the Wellesey girls, hanging out in Harvard Square, and solving complex math problems late at night.
One thing I did learn is understand what you are quoting before you use it. Advice, "Noam", you should take.
I am always amused by the rush to solutions whenever something like this happens. Perhaps because no one wants to take the time or wants to deal with the cause. Nut cases aside (agree they will always be around), We have a continuing break down in social structure and the responsibility of parents. Mom and Dad are two busy chasing the American dream (bigger houses, more expensive cars, more more more) and don't want to accept any responsibility for how their children turn out. Everything now is laid at the school's doorstep. Schools responsibility should be to educate our children, not teach them morals, proper behavior, babysit, etc. Maybe if the parents were around more they would turn off the TV when the violent programs come on. Maybe if the spent more time with their children raising them, instead of confusing material possessions with love, we would not have angry frustrated children acting out violent fantasies in order to get attention. I see a lot of these little time bombs walking around. The wonder is that more of them have not gone off.....
Yeah boyeeee, I was jus' checkin yo street cred. Kerry Bensman, u r the PROFESSOR!
And I've never written anything, ever, that criticizes the media. I don't know where people come up with that shiznat.
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