I can know about the bad things without seeing her photo. Why isn’t the headline good enough? How does me seeing her, alive and smiling, help with anything?
You remind me of people who told me I had to actively watch Al Qaeda beheading videos after 9/11 so I could know how bad they were. No I don’t. Telling me they take videos of people being beheaded is information enough. I don’t need to hear the agonized screaming and see the blood spurting out to learn anything useful.
Wrong. Hear me out again.
You are avoiding the pain. Again, you’re empathetic which is great. Seeing her photo adds more to your suffering.
Very good point about the beheadings stuff from terrorists.
Here’s a thought experiment: what if not only could we not avoid the photos, but as adult members of society we had to see and hear ALL the details. All of them. The rape, the screams, the beheadings. Torture done by drug cartels. Torture and rape done by militaries?
Everyone would shut down. You’d have no desire to go shopping or go to the movies or hang out with friends cracking jokes. In this unlikely universe, the only way to stop hearing about these atrocities, would be to actully stop and prevent them. Because it was ALL out in the open, we would all act much harder to stop all this shit.
Now we can add why the media and the powers that be “protect” us from the gory details and most of the bad stuff. You need to be happy so you can continue producing and consuming.
Here’s a thought experiment for you: What if they didn’t put the child’s photo right at the top so I see it in the thumbnail here without even clicking on the article, which is my issue.
There is nothing I can shut down and of course I would go shopping because I have a family to support. And other people have themselves to support. People aren’t going to just lay down and starve to death.
As far as cracking jokes, people who work in emergency trauma units on battlefields crack jokes. Probably more than you do, just to get through it. And they are able to get on with their lives despite seeing endless horror.
You know what happens when you see that all the time? Desensitization. You stop caring about seeing it because you know you’ll keep seeing it.
I’m amazed you don’t understand the concept of desensitization. It’s been used all over the world to get people to accept atrocities as normal.
