Wanted: Empathy Seeds 🌱🌻🪴
Too many violent movies have dulled or obliterated the character trait that humans need to practice charity and concern for others’ suffering. Empathy.
Empathy allows us to step into another’s shoes and walk his walk, to feel as we are experiencing the ups and downs of his life, to see as he sees. It’s a quality lacking as we stay alone in our small insulated family or group of friends. We become hardened to anyone but ourselves and our difficulties. We no no time for anyone but ourselves. We become critics, haters, bigots, or worse.
Why have I noted movies instead of social media? Before we had heard of social media, we have always had war, mystery, crime, and adventure movies where rapes, murders, slashings, mutilations, bombs graphically depicted. Halloween fake blood fun movies seemed fine.
Balanced (sane) viewers watch violence, but they have empathy with the victims—not the perpetrators. Disturbed individuals watch and identify with the villains, the murderers, the rapists, and seeds of destruction are planted in psychopaths’ brains.
So. Empathy begins at home the way parents read to their children, the verbal expressions of parents during television viewing. No young child decides to do violence by himself. He absorbs the violent (or kind) attitudes around him when parents are talking. He feels their anger and their disgust—and later adds it to his violent repertoire.
How can nice people watch violence and never condone it or want to be violent? It’s a mystery. Look around at all you see today, and ask yourself how our society has become immune to witnessing such violence. Is it just violence overload or have parents planted too many bad seeds without thinking what will grow and fester?
Dear parents and teachers: plant empathy seeds and water them daily. You can make a real difference one child at a time, one school at a time, one community at a time. Plant empathy!
Thank you thank you thank you. I thought maybe I was weird, well, actually I am, but when I try to relax in the evenings, I don't want to have violence and "There's a serial killer on every corner" on every program and in every movie as a way to unwind. I read the news. Death, destruction, and hate are covered for the day. I look for something to make me laugh, smile, or just feel happy for a while. Or inform me. I like historical programs or movies. This is why I read a lot of novels. It takes me someplace sane. To show just how much I like to escape reality for a bit, my favorite books are the most hilarious paranormal fiction books I can find. The more absurd and funnier they are, the more centered I feel. See, I told you I was weird.
So true Diane! the most popular TV shows for over 20 years have been the Forensic and lawyer shows that make it seem like we live in a lawless country but other than the orange traitor and ongoing nightmare of mass shootings - all crime has actually been going down for 40 years now! But you would never know that with the men and now sadly women detectives dancing with guns on TV and in films every night stoking our fears. Just a daily review of the top 10 on Netflix tells the whole story. Hollywood really is like a Babylon that poisons the soul of our nation. We need more feel good shows and films!