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Friday, June 24, 2011

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I was reading some articles just now, just to find some suitable ones for the English article portfolio and it was then when I came across a super interesting article- http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/27/the-science-of-empathy. Everyone should read it, even though it is a little length, approximately 6 pages long, but overall, it is worth reading.

The article talks about how history was littered with humans with no empathy and compassion for things or people around them, be it things that they care about a lot, or things that they don't even pay attention to. A REAL CONCRETE EXAMPLE is the holocaust event ( I am glad that I took up history, so I can actually understand things mentioned in the article ), a name for that the historian coined for the series of inhuman experiments or tortures which the Jews had experienced under the dictatorship of the Nazi (German people). In history, I had learnt about the mild cruelty of the Nazi- the teacher just briefly mentioned the fact that the Jews were tortured during these periods during their days in the concentration camp; however, I did not expect the severely of the situation to be much greater than that. The Jews were treated like experiment objects and the Nazi did not even value life at all. Shouldn't we value life of any form?

I remembered two days ago, I was having this bible study and was posted this question- If you are given a choice to save two person who are about to perish, with one being a doctor and another being a roadsweeper, which one will you save? The answer which a lot of people will choose is the doctor, because after you save the doctor, the doctor will in turn save more people, therefore the profit which the world will yield from saving a doctor will be much more than that of saving a roadsweeper.

The answer that my bible study teacher gave surprised me. She said, both are lives. Shouldn't we value them equally? What makes some lives seem more unworth it than the rest? I mention this just to illustrate the point that all human livs are equal, should be treated equally as a result and there is nothing such as a superior life as compared to the other one.

Just like cold is an absent of heat, evil is therefore an absent of empathy. There is this case which is presented in the article, talking about a man who killed another guy because the man was looking in his direction and when confronted, the reason why the victim did so was just simply because he happened to be looking around and he was looking at that direction. However, the author deemed that as a sign of disrespect. In court, the murderer did not feel any remorse for doing so. He said, " People have treated me like shit all my life. I'm not taking it from no one no more. If someone shows me disrespect, they deserve what they get."

In addition, he mentioned that, "Were the kids at school sorry when they bullied me? was my boss sorry when he fired me? Was my neighbour sorry when he deliberately hit my car? And you ask me if I'm sorry that that piece of shit died? Of course, I'm not sorry." He was a Type P- psychopath.

However, we should not judge him as evil or something like that for the crimes he did. His brain was wired in a different manner such that he did not feel anything when he commit ed the crime. He didn't have empathy, which causes him unable to relate to anything or feel anything. It is so scary when one person totally lost control of him/ herself and all that is left in his or her life are just negative emotions!

I am not saying that he is justifiable for the crimes that he committed but on the other hand, he was not totally to be blamed for it because his brain did not tell him that it was wrong. It is so scary that a person lacks emapthy. Should the world have a new way of judging the criminals; The criminals lack of the feeling empathy which is why they committed the crimes unknowingly, without the knowledge that what they are doing are actually wrong and evil deeds? Instead, I feel that the world should constantly monitor everyone's brain health, which people can know whether or not they are going down the negative route of zero empathy or otherwise.

I should end off with a quote that I had found- Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes solube. CHEMISTRY!!! (:

Bye. I am going to go out with Felecia and Weiqi now.

12:29 PM;