Recently, we seem to be more bombarded than ever with visual images of the pain and suffering that is going on around the planet, both human and animal. I had a circular yesterday through the post asking for donations to help mistreated donkeys in the third world, made all the more evocative by visual memories of recent TV ads for the same charity.
On the one hand, you can only say what a good thing that someone is doing something about animal cruelty, wherever it is, but it also occurred to me that in our modern world, there is an unfortunate side effect to the sheer volume of exposure we now have, from ads, to daily newspapers, TV, radio, the net and so on ......
It's a very natural thing to respond and help, when we meet suffering. And as an example, living in the country one simply does not ignore a suffering animal, no more than one would walk past a person in distress.
Yet, when over exposed to information of suffering, and knowing one can't respond to ALL of it, does it begin to shut us down? To cause us to anesthetize ourselves away from the empathetic feeling, because the feeling is too much, and does not lead to alleviating actions?
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