Selective Sympathy, Is There Such A Thing?

Sympathy is a natural emotion and reaction of feeling empathy towards the misfortune of others. It cannot be called selective because if it is, it will not be natural and therefore, it is not sympathy. But it will only exist understandably on what captures the attention, for human time is limited and it can not all the time outward looking.

But frustration and disappointment are different. They must not be mistaken for sympathy. When it is the fireman who burns the house, that's frustrating. When it's the doctor that injects deadly virus to the patient, that's disappointing. But when the thief steals someone's property, you'll sympathize with the victim, but will you get similarly disappointed or frustrated with the thief?

You may also sympathize with the owner of the house that got burnt, and the patient who acquired the virus but you will NOT put in much thought on getting frustrated and disappointed with the thief equalled to how you feel with the doctor and the fireman. 

There's a standard, expectation and most importantly "trust" to what roles we expect the fireman and the doctor to accomplish. And yet when they do the opposite, it's frustrating and disappointing, "trust" gets tainted, psyche gets rattled and so we "panic". 

While for the thief, we "expected" him to do bad things. If you don't believe me, just think of the reason why you close your doors, put the locks and tighten your security. And it is also "expected" for the thief to face the law and gets penalized for what is expected of him. It is natural to avoid getting victimized by the thief, yet it is unnatural to avoid the doctors in times of sickness or to think that the fireman will be the one to put our houses on fire.

So no, there is no such thing as selective sympathy. There is only sympathy, and then there is frustration and disappointment.

Individual Emotion and Public Opinions

The character of an individual's emotion and the public opinion are almost the same. When there's a commotion, heavy feelings and tough words will go out. Seems like an orchestrated one, you will hear people saying the same things and suggesting drastic actions in reaction to what the issue is. Wait for a week or two before logical minds and voices take over. Same with you as a person. Once deep emotion subsides, the mind and logic will take over and that's when you need to listen to yourself and take action.

Real Solutions and Adam Warlock's Gauntlet

I was exactly like this. When I was young and got exposed initially to the problems of the world, I suddenly felt the urge to do something, to say something and to change something. I thought that I could. I might be right but not in the grandeur of things. And most of the time, I reacted without looking deeper at the issue. Or “overreacted” is the more appropriate word. My emotions moved ahead of my logic.  So I always ended up empty handed.

I see the same cycle happening a lot today. We see people reacting. Overreacting. 

Let’s take for example some people living in comfort for most of their lives. When presented with something bad that they were never exposed to before, they get shocked. For most of their lives, they never thought these things happen. Then they become angry quickly. They might be thinking that if they are able to avoid these things their whole life, there might be an easy way to save those people who are already suffering. And because some of these people are rich and influential, their voices are loud. They become advocates and activists driven by intense passion calling for change of what they had just discovered. The victims of these “bad things” are always desperate to seek help from powerful people. They also want to end their hardships right away. And once they hear about these powerful people speaking for their cause and who seemed can relate with their ordeals, they will see them as their “champion” and will start betting all their hopes and support for that person.

And then we see them together marching strongly, clamoring for that change. Then calls for everyone to take notice and prioritize the change they like to see, asking the whole world to turn upside down for their cause while being driven by strong emotions.

Seemed noble but it is a lot more dangerous.  By drastic actions, the real problems are not getting addressed. Most social issues we see are just effects of unnoticed deeper wounds. But since we’re only seeing and feeling the pain in the outer, we always result into mere band-aid solutions. This is what happens when we fail to ask the simple question "why".  And one “why” is not enough to get into the root cause and to find out the slow but real keys. Failure to ask “whys” result into histrionic actions and big blank words which drown the real issues underneath. While we’re scratching only the surface and looking for half-baked answers above, it will never clean up the rotting garbage deep below. 

But we’re human beings.  We’re logical beings and emotional as well. I read the Infinity Gauntlet Marvel Comic Book Series. One character in mind that interests me a lot is Adam Warlock. He had once held one of the most powerful items in the Marvel Universe, the Infinity Gauntlet. Once you get a hold of it, you’ll have control of everything, time, space, soul, reality, mind, power. They become god of the Marvel Universe. And the first thing that Adam Warlock did when he get a hold of the gauntlet was to remove his perception of the “good and bad” from his persona. He did it so he’ll be able to decide on things with pure logic without an emotional bias. And so he did. Maybe, we should also not let our perception of “good and bad” take over our emotions. We need to put logic in it. And we might get surprised that the things we thought as good when we haven’t looked the big picture yet, is really the bad one.