Wracked with terrorism, climate change, poverty, and a plethora of social justice issues such as racism, sexism, and heteronormativity, our world today is desperately in need of more empathy. A person is empathetic if they are able to vicariously experience another’s thoughts or emotions; empathy gives a person the ability to identify with a situation without having to experience it first hand. Genocide is, typically, what first comes to mind when one ponders the history of Jewish people. Residing in the historically Jewish district of Paris, however, is a museum dedicated not to the trials and suffering of the Jews, but instead to their art and history; it is a place that celebrates what it means to be Jewish rather than highlighting their past tragedies. Dedicating monuments or museums to horrific events or oppressed groups of people can make people more empathetic by giving them a background to identify with, or a face to match to a name. In a perfect world, people would care about the well being of each other without needing to personally identify with them, but also in this perfect world there would be a surplus of empathy. Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust of Hitler’s Nazi regime during World War II. When we hear the number of lives lost, or see the list of names …show more content…
When we are in need of help, we hope for others to come to our aid, but when we are in a stable place in our lives it is easy to avoid helping others. If more people felt empathetic daily, perhaps the world would not be as cruel of a place. It is easy to believe we make our own fate in this world when you have everything you need to survive. However, some people do not have these luxuries, and it takes a fair amount of empathy to realize