[kahljorn]

so basically what your argument boils down to is that you don't care that much about people you don't know but you care more about people you know :O
thats what i thought and there's somewhere in my post that i called that retarded and then drew attention to the fact that despite having no acquaintance with people on television, people still somehow manage to feel compassion towards them -- which is probably more than they would feel for some random person on the streets.

Also i compared the compassion you'd feel towards friends and family to other "Abstract" forms of compassion and said they really aren't that much different. That, in fact, compassion for friends and family is actually "Abstract." You're not feeling compassionate for them, per se, as much as you are feeling passionate about the injustice of their situation.
Someone mentioned the, "WHAT IF IT WAS ME" thing and I pretty much feel the same way. Why would you feel compassionate about someone anyway if you think that the situation they are in isn't that bad? You probably wouldn't. That's the defining factor of being compassionate for a person. The situation they are in. Otherwise you just go, "QUIT WHINING BITCH!"