So It Goes: The Sad Frustration of ‘Compassion Fatigue’
Read Time:2 Minute, 47 Second
by Jesse Keene
I’ve spent a couple days trying to process the massacre in Las Vegas and how I feel about, how I *should* feel about it, and where we go from here.
I just don’t really feel anything anymore. It’s not that I don’t care, I do, it’s that this is only the latest in a never-ending litany of violence. I’ve seen this same story so many times that it’s not shocking and revolting anymore, it’s just Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday.
I’m not an uncaring person, just the opposite really. I tend to care fiercely and be emotionally impacted by things. I cry at movies when people overcome insurmountable odds, I can’t read stories about crimes against animals or children. I get worked into a froth by the statements or acts of this politician or that. So it’s not that I am just cold or uncaring, it’s that I’ve seen this movie before and now it bores me; I know the plot twist, heard all the jokes, been dazzled by the effects.
Which makes my numbness toward this massacre so frustrating. I feel like I should be deeply affected by this and I’m just not. I recognize that it is a stunningly horrible crime, that thousands of peoples’ lives have been horribly affected, but there’s just nothing in me when I watch the coverage.There’s just nothing there. No anger, no sadness, just a gnawing sense of what I can only describe as Vonnegutism; “So it goes.”
Because I have no faith that any real change will come from this. One side is going to trot out the well-worn, “it’s finally time to talk about tougher gun laws,” narrative. The other side will respond with the, “it’s not guns, it’s a mental health issue,” narrative. But nothing will actually be done about guns or mental health so we’ll never really know. Both sides will talk a lot about hopes and prayers, but talking about hoping and praying will be as far as it goes. Not much real hope or prayer will actually take place for most.
Some groups will claim that the killer was obviously driven by the ideology that their opposition subscribes to and will reject any evidence to the contrary. Some groups will claim that this happened because of too much or not enough ‘God’.
Will we ever really know what possessed this man to take life so violently and indiscriminately? Can we really understand what caused him to stop being one of ‘us’ and to become one of ‘them’? I doubt it, though I suspect the answer is, “far less than you would be comfortable knowing.”
There are never any answers anymore. We just lurch from tragedy to tragedy, dead men walking. We’re all pointing the finger at each other, screaming, “this is YOUR fault!” and we’re all right. Our society continues to create people who want desperately to kill as many others as they can and are willing to lose their own life to do so. That’s moved beyond the borders of my understanding and so I fear that I don’t have any real answers for how to stop it.
So all I’m left with is the hope that someday these events will shock and sadden me again.
Check out DerpDaily to find more great writing from Jesse Keene.
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Looks the Derp has been ignored but this is a good article. Thanks.
I’m afraid I share your confusion Jesse. I don’t understand what is happening to me, because I also cry at sad movies, and pretty much everything else.
Every morning I get up and remember who is president I want to cry.
You’re right Jesse there won’t be any changes anytime soon or even ever.
After two tours in Vietnam I no longer have much compassion, but I can still feel for what others are going through, and I do feel, but not as much as I should. Time.
I spent my entire adult life in law enforcement and I know, from personal experience, that with repeated exposure to stimuli, emotional reactions can be blunted as we become desensitized to them. I became desensitized to them early, and that made me sad. After my retirement my sense of compassion returned, after a fashion, but after shooting after shooting, hurricanes, wars, ISIS beheadings, and etc. I fear I have lost it again. I get it completely. Good article my friend.