The Power of Empathy
“It forces itself inside the egotism fostered by the pressures of our lives and links us with human history and the vast ocean of humanity now on Earth.” Out of context that quote is whimsical and fantasy like, but to get that point in the essay there’s a dark beginning.
“Gotcha!” is based around a single event on May 3, 1982, torpedos from a british submarine hit an Argentine cruiser. The Sun, a successful tabloid, headlined the story “Gotcha!”
The author of the persuasive essay, Robert Fulford, writes about the event and the bases of The Sun’s ignorance. He says that the only way to change the fate of society is through literature, in order to bring back empathy. The world around us has trained us into this repetitive thinking and justification of appalling acts, stripping us of our human emotion and connectivity. So where does the answer lie?
“Not everyone in the
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If so, I do not think that literature alone can save us.
The saddest part is this simple yet, borderline sadist act was justifiable in my mind. At first glance I could understand The Sun’s point of view. “Well they were talking about their enemy”, was my first thought. Only those people were not just the enemy, they were sons, husbands, fathers, daughters, mothers, and above all, human.
The deaths of people are becoming as meaningful as credits on a movie screen. “-people who die by gunfire are usually only extras, or deserve to die.” We pay attention for a fleeting second and then it is suddenly unimportant. So how did children in Syria deserve the right to die, and not only that but never to be recognized? How did it become that the deaths of soldiers or policemen are the only ones given weight? I do not see men who have been beheaded carried on the backs of anyone or cried over by