{"id":3975,"date":"2015-04-28T21:27:53","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T15:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/?p=3975"},"modified":"2015-04-28T21:32:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T16:02:34","slug":"nepal-earthquake-why-dont-i-feel-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/2015\/personal\/nepal-earthquake-why-dont-i-feel-anything.html\/","title":{"rendered":"Nepal Earthquake – Why Don’t I Feel Anything?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0carnage in Nepal:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There’s just one problem. I feel\u00a0nothing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

No sympathy, no sense of urgency, no feeling that “I need to do something now”. I mean I know it intellectually<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

But why do I feel nothing? After all, I’ve felt sympathy\u00a0for 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<\/em> make me want to immediately provide financial assistance to the characters in the story.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s just it – the Nepal quake is too impersonal<\/em> 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”.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There must be others like me as well. What could be done to tap into our “feelies” to make us loosen the purse strings?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nepal Earthquake is a terrible tragedy. I feel nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"yoast_head":"\nNepal Earthquake - Why Don't I Feel Anything?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Nepal Earthquake is a terrible tragedy. 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