By all accounts, the devastation in Nepal is unimaginable. With a magnitude of 7.8, it was a monster especially given that the Richter scale is logarithmic. I’ve heard of the devastation. I’ve heard of aid flowing in from all across the world. I know the situation is dire and serious. And this morning, I saw the following popup on my Facebook page asking me to donate to help alleviate the carnage in Nepal:
There’s just one problem. I feel nothing.
No sympathy, no sense of urgency, no feeling that “I need to do something now”. I mean I know it intellectually. But that’s not enough to make me offer aid. Ultimately, most of us do charity for the warm fuzzy feelings it brings us. Without that, well I just can’t bring myself to donate.
But why do I feel nothing? After all, I’ve felt sympathy for many others for tragedies far less in scale than this one. Stories of a single farmer’s suicide for examples. Misfortunes of the kind found in Les Miserables make me want to immediately provide financial assistance to the characters in the story.
Maybe that’s just it – the Nepal quake is too impersonal to me. Too distant. Nothing I can relate to. All I see and hear is statistics. It’s lacking the personal story that would give me the “feels”.
For example, I was profoundly moved by this viral picture showing a 4-year old girl in a refugee camp in Syria raising up her hands in “surrender” because she thought the photographer was holding a gun:
It really got to me. And not just me, but millions of people all over the world. It became known as “The Photograph that broke the Internet’s heart”. If people had a chance to donate money to help this girl secure a safe future in another country, the funds would come pouring in without hesitation.
This is just an observation I’m making about my response to tragedy on a mass scale in the abstract vs a more intimate representation. I’m not offering an opinion on how the publicity for the Nepal earthquake could have been different. It’s a personal explanation for why, even though I’ve been deluded with news articles about the tragedy, I feel absolutely nothing and no compulsion whatsoever to provide monetary assistance for the relief efforts in Nepal.
There must be others like me as well. What could be done to tap into our “feelies” to make us loosen the purse strings?
i decide every year that i will donate a certain sum for national disasters ( Nepal earthquake would qualify ) and donate other sums for old age homes/ disabled people/animal welfare/ etc…so whether there’s a ” fuzzy feeling ” or not..the money is just sent..
In reply to tp
Yeah. I guess without the fuzzies I’m just not the donating type…
In reply to bhagwad
The same guy who wont tip his server doesn’t feel anything when men women and children are killed in a horrific natural disaster… Why am I not surprised? narcissistic puke.
I’d rather see that my money is in the right hands. That’s why I contribute to people whom I know personally.
Maybe the picture of the four month old boy dug out of the wreckage will get to you! :P
In reply to Roshni
Agree. I need personal stories and an assurance that the money I give will go to that specific person in need!
Lets look at your own posts and the passion with which you have argued in the comments:
http://www.bhagwad.com/blog/2014/politics/are-the-israeli-bombings-of-gaza-justified.html/
And the pain of Syria really got to you.
So…what about Nepal? Let me make a wild guess. Could it have something to do with the fact that the people of Nepal typically do not belong to one of the secular religions?
In reply to Abhishek
Are you serious?
In reply to bhagwad
Well, a bit surprising no that you were so cut up about Gaza…but you don’t feel for Nepal?
Oh and as for “personal stories”, come on man! What personal story did you hear out of Gaza? Are you telling me that in all this media coverage of Nepal, there wasn’t one personal story that hurt you? That’s only possible if you don’t care to listen.
And why wouldn’t you care to listen to reports about Nepal when you listened to Gaza? The war in Gaza was barely covered in Indian media, while Nepal got saturation coverage. You were so worried about Gazans you went out of your way to find out about their plight! And Nepal…ha!
I am not accusing you of anything. Just suggesting that you should examine if you have any biases you have become so used to that you dont even notice them any more.
Try to think about it. The difference really could be that your liberal mindset inherently sees the pagan Hindus as subhuman… As I mentioned, it was a guess from me. But I suggest you dont dismiss it offhand.
In reply to Sumit
Yep – there wasn’t one story that got to me. For Gaza, I heard lots of them. The fear of not knowing when the next attack would come. For having to keep looking up at the sky. etc etc. I don’t hear the same amount of misery stories coming from Nepal.
I don’t just watch Indian news. So that will help explain to you my level of exposure to Gaza.
I think if there are any biases here, it has to be from you. To even suggest something like religion has a role to play in the thought process of someone like me requires a deep paranoia. When I say “someone like me”, I mean an atheist. A person who doesn’t take religion into consideration. It is invisible to me.
So let’s end this right here. This is way off topic and has nothing to do with my original post.
he’s right, bhagwad
why haven’t you condemned the earthquake? there needs to be a line. or you just throw up your hands and say there is no line, in which case, earthquake the entire country.
generations of nepalese children will grow up hating the tectonic plates
why haven’t you spoken out against this senseless tragedy ?
In reply to tehy
Madam/Sir,
In the post itself, Mr. Bhagwad has compared his reaction to Syria vs his reaction to Nepal. Thus, he has himself chosen to mix up natural disasters with man made ones.
Thanks,
Abhishek
In reply to tehy
I know right? Talk about paranoia. I’ve already explained that the defining factor is the depiction of individual misery which the Nepal press coverage hasn’t shown me yet.
It’s possible he’s just trolling…
nepal – natural disaster , nature at its fury. Nothing that can prevent the disaster as nature is not in our control, so we just have to bear it all and move on.
gaza – something man made which could have been avoided. Since man made disaster hence may be you can relate more , enraged more and sad more?
On a side note, since I am from Kolkata, when nature was ravaging Nepal, we felt the tremors exactly at the same time, for two minutes. I could not even imagine that those two minutes, a whole country was being destroyed like this.
Donation: Not my thing, Don’t understand it.
You cannot compare pain, it is subjective. If I shot myself in the foot more than likely I’d survive unless I failed to go to hospital; if I shot a hamster it would probably die, even if they went to hospital.
Also, I’d like to point out that weather controlling technology has existed for quite some time. Oh and the cure for cancer is patented