Why aren’t we more compassionate?

The link of the presentation:

\After watching this video, I made a summarization and wrote down my reflection and thoughts. I hope this material can help you explore deeper into this topic. And, if you have any ideas, please feel free to contact me or give me some comments. :)

If we are preoccupied with affairs or only focus on ourselves, as we usually are throughout the day, we are not able to be empathic or even notice other people at all.

There is a study which was done a while ago at Princeton Theological Seminary. In the study, two groups of students were told to give a practice sermon. The first group got random sermon topics; the second group got the parable of the Good Samaritan: a man stops and helps the stranger in need by the side of the road.

Two groups needed to go to two different places to give the sermons. When they were moving, they would encounter a stranger who was bent over and mourning by the side of the road. The question is: would they stop and help that stranger?

The first group, who got random sermon topics, did not choose to stop and help that stranger. Moreover, the second group, whose sermon topic is the Good Samaritan, did not choose to do so, too.

Why? How could they not notice the guy who needed help? He was standing on the roadside. And, he was mourning. Those students should have been able to easily notice and help that stranger.

The reason why they just cannot is that they were preoccupied with the practice of sermon. The most important task for them at that moment was to move to another place and give a sermon; so, they chose to ignore unconsciously or did not notice at all.

Think back to yourselves. Isn’t it similar to our daily lives? Nowadays, we are preoccupied with many affairs almost all the time. We need to work and deal with a huge number of things every day; so, what is the priority of caring for others in our life? Are we able to empathize with others in modern society anymore?

More precisely and affirmatively, as the way we so often live our daily life, we may not be able to take care of others’ feelings. We do the same thing exactly like those students. Every day, we focus only on ourselves or keep using our phones all the time, and as a result we will not notice others and empathize with others. The way we live our life is also a way to turn our empathy off.

Living in a world with no empathy, isn’t it scary? However, the situation is not hopeless. It does not mean that humans nowadays cannot truly be empathetic to others anymore. Because, to empathize with others, only takes a simple act of putting down your phone and noticing and connecting with the feelings of others, we all can do it immediately.

Time is precious these days. We talk about productivity and efficiency more now; we also focus more on time management. All of these topics have the same goal — utilize our time, as much as we possibly can.

Doing our best to utilize our time is strange, or normal at first, but turns out to be odd finally. It is good to focus on productivity and efficiency if we are working. However, we have extended this concept too much, we want efficiency and productivity at everything. Even when we have leisure time, we want to utilize that time, using our phone to communicate with other friends or receive news around the world. In this way, we pay too much attention to ourselves. And inevitably, it also makes us lack empathy.

This presentation has made me contemplate. Lack of empathy, I am also a perpetrator of this phenomenon. As I have noticed, whenever I want to do or achieve something, I will not care about others’ feelings so much.

It does not mean I will hurt others when I want to do something. It means when I want to do something, or in the speaker’s words, am preoccupied with some affairs, I will usually ignore others’ needs. What I do is exactly the same situation as what the speaker described, not helping that stranger who is in need.

When I first watched this video, I did not have strong feelings towards this topic. What I thought was: “Yeah… we should all care more about others. Do not use our phones so frequently.” However, when I am writing down my reflection, I am noticing that I am the person the speaker tries to awake.

I reserved a discussion room in our library for a class discussion. Only students can get access to those discussion rooms. Therefore, in spite of the reservation, before entering a discussion room, it requires three student ID cards for the usage of proving that we are students.

However, one of my teammates lost his student ID card just before going to the library. At that moment, all I was thinking about was how to enter the discussion room under this situation. Not like others, they helped him search for his student ID card and cared about his problem.

I clearly remember all I was thinking was how to enter the discussion room.

I do not know if I can be called indifferent or lacking empathy when I was acting in this way. If we just focus on this case, it might be a little exaggerating to say I am indifferent or lacking empathy. However, at least I know, if the same thing or more serious things happen again, I will probably act the same way, not caring about others very much.

Therefore, this video reminds me to be more empathetic or compassionate, which I have done terribly so far.

Although the speaker previously mentioned that to care about others only takes a simple act of noticing, I am not sure is it really easy. For me, it sounds like I still need to know or learn how to care for others’ feelings. How to act more appropriately?

Maybe I can try next time, then write down my feelings or reflections, to record whether it is that easy or not.