[kahljorn]

I think when people feel "Compassion" they are essentially feeling outraged by injustice. When I see something on television I don't like, I feel the same.

When people walk up to me on the street and tell me their life story I don't care. Bums do this all the damned time to try to get money from me. I don't attach to them on an emotional level. I don't connect with them on a personal level. People on the television are the same as people on the street because I don't even know them, yet I sometimes find myself feeling more compassion towards them. Possibly because their position actually merits compassion.
What about if someone random came up to you on the street and told you their whole family died in a car wreck and started crying? Would you be thinking about it for weeks and ways you could help them feel better? Honestly is there anybody who didn't feel horrible when 9/11 happened? Didn't it move an entire country to pursue a war? Isn't the definition of COM-PASSION to feel bad for people's misery and attempt to alleviate it? Feeling PASSIONATE for another person? Considering that the people who appear on television are complete strangers who I will never meet I think that I'm having quite a bit of an emotional attachment to them...

When you guys say personal level I think family and friends. I think it's dumb to compare the compassion and emotional attachment to someone you actually know on a personal level to the compassion you'd feel for strangers who you don't know. Regardless, if I hear something i interpret as injustice I still think, "WHAT THE FUCK? WHY? AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO FIX THIS? MAYBE THEY COULDVE DONE THIS." Just the other day my friend was telling me about how her husband is suing her for half her belongings-- this guy's a complete douche. I felt outraged. It's the same feeling I get from watching stupid shit on television.

I think comparing movie violence influence to compassion/outrage for real events is impossible, mostly because they are two entirely separate emotions and situations -- maybe. I don't know, I think videogames if anything just encourage people to act on their feelings, because you can do that in videogames, almost as if it makes you "God" and outside of/above humanity. I think it may also aid in exaggerating emotions for the same reason.
But i think it would be interesting to note that some people CRY WHEN THEY SEE SAD SCENES IN MOVIES and sometimes men HOLLER when they get excited over football and other times people laugh when jokes are made on television. God this is a retarded conversation. Aren't there some movies that the problem with them is stated as, "I couldn't feel attached to any of the characters. I just didn't care about them. They were dumb" etc?
How are there good guys and bad guys in movies and television? How are there heros and villains?

Anyway, none of you has even remotely demonstrated that people don't feel compassion for people on television. And what makes the compassion you feel towards people in real life any different? I doubt you guys show that much more compassion in real life. I kind of agree with preechr when he says that compassion doesn't even really exist, or not in the way people think it does. You guys seem to be defining it as like crying with other people and having some severe emotional crippling because of something you see on tv. How often does that happen in real life when someone tells you their boyfriend broke up with them? Isn't the only difference that you have direct contact with them so you try to comfort them? Does that make the feelings you have stronger? I don't think it does, and if it does it's just because they are sharing more of their hardship with you, and through the back-and-forth conversation they are giving you more and more reasons to be outraged -- some that the person knows may outrage you in particular, and usually people hide flaws from their side of the story. News stories often develop in a similar way, though, it just takes time.