Sympathy, Compassion, Sympathetic Imagination
With this I will take a moment to mention something more pressing than the abuse of animals like a few other posts have been about. ItÕs the abuse of people.
I watch commercials on TV all the time of how I should donate to PETA or the ASPCA or what have you, and every time, I think about how many more abused people there are in the world than animals. Whenever we see commercials about sponsoring World Vision
World Vision[i]
or other service organizations devoted to ending world hunger or war, we just blow them off and treat them as though they are excessive, or that we canÕt do anything to help. But the minute a cute little puppy dog in a clean, sterile vetÕs office
Puppy[ii]
comes up, we immediately assume that this animal was abused and needs our help (which we can easily give), because he is so much more accessible than those people in Africa.
JudeÕs sympathy for animals is quite sincere, even to the point of losing his job, ÒHe sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heard grew sympathetic with the birdsÕ thwarted desiresÓ[iii]. JudeÕs concern is touching, and he later shows sympathy for Sue to the utmost extreme, but this isnÕt even helpful to anyone, much less him. HeÕs just walked on all the time and highly under appreciated.
Vegans have all sorts of reasons for not eating meat. For one thing, it saves money most of the time. I hardly ever eat meat, and it isnÕt by choice: itÕs a result of expense. But some vegans just do it for the social benefits.
Vegan...sorta[iv]
What if those vegans gave their ÒextraÓ money to people in our countryÕs ghettos? ThatÕs a bit extreme, IÕd say, but honestly. We should promote help for humans more than animals on TV.
Compassion is defined in our reading as, ÒSuffering together
with another, participation in suffering; fellow-feeling, sympathyÓ[v],
but do we really want to suffer with
someone else? When we think of compassion for those less fortunate, we usually
just want to send them money and be done with it. But what if we went there and
actually did something about it? What if we lived as they did instead of
staying at home in our comfy armchairs sipping mixed drinks?
Likewise, sympathy is defined in our reading as, ÒA relation between two bodily organs or parts (or between two persons) such that disorder, or any condition, of the one induces a corresponding condition in the otherÉ.Ó[vi] I donÕt think weÕd like AIDS to infect all of our relatives or kill our parents as it does to many of the children living in Zambia. But for many people, this is a reality.
But why should we care if other people are suffering? TheyÕre so far away, right?
And puppies are just cuter.
