Mama Moonbat quits anti-war movement

[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!"

[Perndog]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Except for the "passionate about injustice" bit. I'm talking about compassion as in just plain sympathy: caring that someone is hurt and wanting to do something about it. Indignance at injustice can be completely separate from compassion. And of course, I disagree with all of your criticism of my opinion.

[kahljorn]

so you mean sympathy as in like maybe donating money to help the victims of hurricane katrina

going to war to prevent terrorists to attack in the future and to get revenge

giving the kids who died in the virginia tech shooting their degrees

discussing how to prevent problems like killer gunmen at school

discussing how to detect and help "psychopaths" before they kill everyone

etc.etc.

basically everything i said about mama moonbat hug day/mama moonbat cryday is what you expect from the media and from people's response to the media.

And how do people even help people in real life? They sit there and spout off their irrelevant opinion, usually. Or they talk shit on the person who has wronged them and sit there and hug the person. That's sympathy and compassion in real life. "OMG I CANT BELIEVE RYAN BROKE UP WITH YOU WHAT A JERK. I NEVER LIKED HIM ANYWAY" etc.

[Perndog]

No, none of those is an example of what I mean. The first one is just "being a good person", the second one is patriotism, the third is institutional public relations, the fourth and fifth are social improvement. No personal compassion is required for any of them.

[kahljorn]

Why don't you define and give an example of compassion/sympathy in real life, then.
because you said feeling bad for a person and trying to alleviate the problem, and that is basically what i thought of :O
being a good person and sympathy/compassion aren't the same i guess or SOMETHING.

When they helped the victims of hurricane Katrina, didn't they "Care that people were hurt" and then try to "Do something about it?" Yes.

Isn't trying to improve society basically "Caring that people get hurt" by society and then "Trying to do something about it?" Yes.

i think you're splitting hairs and that you're retarded.

here's your original statement:

Being a face on television rather than a real live person in our individual experience goes most of the way to putting her beyond compassion for a lot of us. This is the way people tend to process things. It only matters when it's close to home.