The ad in question stung me to my core. It was a heartrending experience, and I mean that. To the narration of the beautiful and eloquent Sarah McLachlan, my TV screen displayed pictures of unimaginable horror. Scarred faces, broken bodies, eyes that had been deliberately blinded and thousand yard stares we recall so well from photographs of the victims of atrocities. Not your usual public service advert, but one that exposed the raw cruelty of humankind and gently, implicitly demanded we do something about to correct it.
Still, the more I watched, the more troubled I became. Because I knew these pictures would touch many of my fellow Americans in ways that most public service announcements do not, and would no doubt increase contributions to the organization who had made the ad. Troubled not because I have anything against the fine organization which is running this ad. It’s a fine charity, one that is doing noble work to end the suffering of innocent victims of human cruelty.
No, what troubled me was the fact of the photographs themselves. For you see, the organization in question was the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA for short, and the pictures it displayed of suffering victims in need of our help were of dogs and cats, not people, not human beings.
Don’t misinterpret or misunderstand my point. I am against cruelty to animals, especially the type of cruelty I witnessed on my television last night, and I support the ASPCA. No creature should have to endure the forms of physical torture and abuse I witnessed in those photographs. No what bothered me was that I knew that this would be a very effective ad, one that would elicit an emotional response from thousands, perhaps millions of my fellow citizens.
People who are untouched by the plight of millions of children without health insurance, or by the anguish of people who have insurance but have been denied coverage for treatments that might have saved their lives. People who are immune to the vast suffering of the Iraqi people, who live under the threat of death from a myriad of sources every day. People who would just as soon shoot an “illegal alien” (or say they would), as offer to help them provide for their families. People who think millionaires deserve a tax cut of $287,000 while children in poverty deserve the equivalent of only $20 per child for their education.
People who think torture is acceptable and necessary, as long as it isn’t happening to them but to some unknown, nameless, faceless “terrorist” and who believe we should not look too deeply into those who conduct such torture on our behalf. People I know. People in my own family.
People who are unconcerned that American planes last week bombed a village in Iraq with over 100,000 pounds of explosives, a not uncommon occurrence these days. Bombing people from 10,000 feet above the ground is somehow perfectly acceptable behavior these days, even when it kills innocents, yet similar attacks delivered by our enemies without the benefit of military aircraft is somehow a heinous act.
I sometimes wonder why we don’t have a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Human Beings. But then, I imagine that even if we did, we’d never see an ad like the one ASPCA is running. No television network would run it, and if they did I doubt it would elicit the same level of sympathy that the ASPCA ad does. As a nation we can weep at the suffering of animals we keep as pets, but collectively it seems too many of us have hardened our hearts to the suffering of members of our own species, for whatever reason. We don’t blame the dogs and cats who suffered such abuse for their misery, so why do so many of us blame the victims of abuse, violence and neglect merely because they happen belong to that sub species of hominids referred to as homo sapiens sapiens?
Once upon a time a wise man told us “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Supposedly we are a nation which was founded in part on the moral and ethical teachings of this man, a nation many of whose citizens worship him as the Son of God. Yet we ignore his teachings. We love our pets. We feel sadness, even grief, and are moved to action at the sight of abused animals. We feel their pain. Why are so many Americans, even Christian Americans, so unable to transfer those same empathic impulses to their fellow human beings?
I have no answers. I wish the ASPCA all the best with their new ad campaign. I suspect it will be very effective. I just wish we lived in a world where the the human victims of abuse, violence, abandonment, poverty and cruelty evoked a response among all Americans at least equal to that which the pictures of these abused animals engender within us.
And I wish I understood all those who seemingly lack that empathy for the misery of their fellow human beings, even as they weep at the sight of these abused pets. I wish I understood those who call themselves Christians yet ignore on a daily basis the greatest commandment Jesus Christ ever gave us.
Maybe I expect too much.
Federal laws against cruelty toward animals would help to set the stage for further legislation against cruelty toward human beings. We celebrate Holocaust Day as a day we say, never again. But again and again it has happened. In Kenya we are seeing the beginnings of another Holocaust, a repetition of Rwanda, when the US remained idly by just watching from the sidelines.
You can tell a lot about the character of a person by the way he treats his animals and pets. The character of a nation can be similarly told by the way it advocates for nature and the rights of animals as well as human beings.
But the US has lost its way in this area, one in which it should be taking up leadership.
Actually , laws against animal cruelty were exactly how laws against child abuse came to exist. In the 1870’s a neighbor concerned about the abuse of a child took the case to the local SPCA on the grounds that a child is part of the animal kingdom, and laws against animal cruelty should apply. The courts agreed.
For some people it appears the crack to open a hardened heart is through a pet. Perhaps it reminds them of a treasured companion from their childhood.
“You can tell a lot about the character of a person by the way he treats his animals and pets.” Amen, and when a young kid blows up frogs in Texas and goes on to become President….
No guessing here is required nor who it was who cheerleaded during the Lebanon and Gaza invasions, to say nothing about the invasion of Iraq.
Ouch!
I had not really thought of it in that manner, but I think that that quote cuts to the heart of it all.
I also agree with what you say about the Christians who seem to miss the boat. We were talking about that at Bible study last night at church. We can lament the fact that the Fred Phelps’ and others of his ilk get all of the press coverage, but as Christians we absolutely have to wrest the microphones from their hands to get the true message of Christianity out there. After all the word gospel is from the Old English for good news.
For example, it aggravates me to no end when a request is made of our very small church for assistance with a heating bill of some other help like getting someone’s kids a new pair of shoes for school, that we get so much resistance within the church. So far, though, I and others who agree with me, have been able to lead our church to do these acts of kindness.
Interestingly enough, the ASPCA is on my daughter’s and my list of charities that we support each year with a small monetary donation. But, so are The VFW, The Smile Train, Special Olympics, The Carter Center, The Innocence Project, and a few others.
I really enjoy your writings, Steven, though as a lurker, you might not realize it. Thanks for writing about such thought provoking stuff (what I call ‘mirror moments’ when I teach Sunday School– those times when the lesson makes you look into the mirror to see how it really applies to you, and not as an abstract conceptual lesson.)
Thanks for breaking your lurking. My aunt belongs to a evangelical Methodist church that does good work too. Many do. But I know far too many so-called Christians who seem to have lost their way. And not just Christians, either.
Mukasey’s testimony yesterday responding to question of would he consider waterboarding torture if it was done to him? His answer was that he would FEEL that it was.
The absolute empathy disconnect.
I don’t know whether it’s too much junk food or what, but it can be argued that empathy has skipped out on alot of folks’ DNA and to replace it they import emotion. It ends up, pardon this, as being the difference between living a well balanced life and instead borrowing from Brittany Spears life and then popping the occasional multi-vitamin to make everything right.
Scary times when we are missing both empathy and the rule of law.
It’s at least urban legend that Hitler wept over cute children and fuzzy pets. Sentimentality is the opposite of empathy — a redirection of real emotion toward other beings to a fantasy starring one’s self. The ASPCA does good and necessary work, but their ads stoop to the easiest pitch: marketing to sentimentality rather than a broad worldview that connects our feelings to all beings, including humans and the living planet.
I suppose some hint of sympathy is better than none, but where there’s no intellectual consistency, there’s little probability that it will grow into true empathy, true identification with the other in all its variety. Still you work with what you’ve got.
As to your puzzlement re Christianity, I don’t get it. Your were expecting some transformation after 2000 years? Christians and their Abrahamic brethren are, after all made in the image of their god. Why would they not behave just like that icon?
Sentimentality is the opposite of empathy — a redirection of real emotion toward other beings to a fantasy starring one’s self.
So well put.
I have two cats, and I’m absolutely in love with my brother’s dog. He really is amazing; he’s very protective of our nephew (just shy of 2) AND my parents, who are 60ish. I feel he’s a part of the family, and if he wants to sleep in my old bed at home, he can.
But he’s a dog.
That’s why I was unnerved over the Michael Vick hoopla. Yes, he should have punished. BUT. When you have people like Sen. Byrd taking to the Senate floor to rant about him, but are silent about the human scum who tortured and almost killed Megan Williams in his own state, then something is wrong.
I’m familiar with the ad you speak of, Steven. A very touching ad.
Last night I watched, as an HBO OnDemand selection, their new documentary (from BBC) “Baghdad Hospital – Inside the Red Zone.” Talk about witnessing absolute misery. Mothers crying because their children were just blown up by a car bomb while playing in the street. Real people showing up loaded with shrapnel. Surgeries on little kids without anesthetic, using primitive, painful techniques because they lack equipment or supplies like X-ray film or ultrasound machines that we take for granted. Tough stuff to watch.
I’ve seen similar documentaries of US military hospitals in Iraq where brave American soldiers are treated by fine American trauma doctors with the best available equipment and supplies before being airlifted to Germany to be treated in a full-service hospital. Makes you feel so good to be a taxpayer, paying for it all.
But this is different. This hospital is a run-down Iraqi hospital, a victim of American contractor fraud, doing its best with the crap equipment that they have, blood shortages, ambulances full of bullet holes. Because the hospital will treat anyone, Sunni or Shia, members of the staff are regularly murdered – made an example of – by various terrorist groups in the area.
This is a civil war that our lust for oil started and we continue to supply with weapons, but not adequate medical supplies. Yet – ironically – if a charity were established to assist these people, it would likely be raided by the US government, accused of providing aid to “terrorists.” Meanwhile, we live our comfortable lives of consumption, borrowing Billions every day to prolong the misery of a people who’s country we stole and continue to occupy. Just disgusting.