Brooks originally wanted to design the doll so that it cried more
and more hysterically until it got what it wanted, but Hasbro said this was
unworkable. The doll had to remain at the level of entertainment, rather than
become an actual simulation of human life.
Gaby Wood, "Living Dolls"
When a small boy washed up on the coast of Turkey a couple of
years ago, a cartoon in Charlie
Hebdo provoked a small outcry
when it depicted the youth, in a counterfactual universe, growing up to be a
man who harasses women (“our” women!). I’m not sure what the original
intent of the author was, although it seems like an ironic comment on the
racist double standard whereby well-off white lads are
given lenient sentences when they actually do commit an assault, but dead Arab
boys who have yet to hit puberty are a sad case, but maybe let’s not get TOO
upset, because who knows what they'll be like if they grow up.
Although such prejudices may exaggerate a lack of compassion, many
people saw the sadness at an individual level but then simply felt overwhelmed
by the scale of the issue. Most people that I know want to have some kind
of compassion towards the many unfortunate people out there. However, as
individuals we can only do so much while trying to live our own lives
successfully. When compassion fatigue sets in, burnout may follow.
Burnout is characterised by an increased cynicism and emotional
fatigue, as well as doubts about the value of one's work. Within the
helping professions (e.g. counsellors, mental health nurses) occupational burnout is
quite prevalent. Furthermore, within these professions burnout should be of
particular concern, as it has the potential to quickly affect others; a burnt
out psychologist won't offer the same quality of care to a client. Indeed, this
is also the case among informal caregivers (e.g. people caring for a relative
with dementia); a burnt out family carer is more likely to see their
relative go into long-term care outside their own home. To put the impact of
burnout in context, the state of the art in
this area is still unclear on the distinction between burnout and depression. Perhaps
the lack of a consensus on how exactly burnout should be defined doesn't help.
I suspect that a major risk factor for compassion fatigue and
burnout is overly high expectations in helping, and perhaps high expectations
of the person receiving help. Help offered in a psychological context is rather
more complex than the endangerment of a small child's life. No one who seeks
help is perfect, and sadly many people engage in self-destructive and
self-sabotaging behaviour. When does sympathy give way to frustration, which
gives way to apathy? How long does one bang one’s head over the misattributions
some people make before one stops trying to point them out? Self-care is
important, so is self-awareness, and so too awareness of the other.
Perhaps there’s something more fundamental underneath all this. Do
we want to go beyond compassion and understanding to something deeper? It’s
prosaic to say that a display of emotion (e.g. sadness) in another person can
make us feel sad in our own way. But can true empathy (feeling what another
person feels) truly exist? Or are feelings that appear to be shared simply a
simulacrum of what we perceive to be the other person's emotion? The answer is
the latter. Each consciousness is private. Will a difficulty in accepting this
worsen compassion fatigue?
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