Saturday, February 17, 2007

Indifference on Genocide

Pastors, political activists, and concerned citizens beware! Alerting others to mass atrocities may not be the best manner to engender concern and compassion to people in need, according to a recent research article. My suggestion to the natural human reaction to be overwhelmed by mass suffering would be to focus specifically on an individual case of suffering rather than presenting numbers of how many people are actually suffering. I don't think preaching at our need to become sensitive to the actual numbers will work - that is to say I don't think you should force your numbers on people to make them comply. Instead, by focusing on an individual it becomes possible to address larger concerns regardless of this phenomenon.

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