What happened to sympathy?

Question

It seems to have disappeared.

Answer 1

It honestly does seem to have disappeared from society...a sad thing in my opinion..I think it's partly due to ppl just don't have a conscience to much anymore...=)
~peace~

Answer 2

I don't agree with you there. Although if someone has been unsympathetic to you I'm sad for you.

I know some very sympathetic people, and they really help me out. I met quite a few on this site and I think they're wonderful.

Feel free to email me through my profile page if you would like to chat.

Answer 3

Some feelings aren't as strong as they used to be, but there are people who still have sympathy..I do..

Answer 4

People are expected to be tough. And if you suffer, you're considered weak. When people are down, or they suffer, others talk about "he brought it on himself", "that's life, move on", "it could be worse", etc.

I think suffering and feeling for those who are suffering is part of life. Society today is rough. I'm personally stuck back in the 50's.

Answer 5

You are sooo right it has disappeared and it is sad. People today are too caught up in themselves and don't know how to be sympathetic to anyone but themselves.

Answer 6

Do you need some sympathy?
if so i can be your shoulder to cry on
or the person to listen to your problems
it seems like it has disappeared
some people have just stopped caring like they used to...

Answer 7

Not here it hasn't. I seem to be a little too sympathetic~and empathetic. At least that's what my fiance tells me. I don't care. I'm staying just the way I am. Someone has to care, right? :)

Answer 8

The decline reflects changes in society, and it is not so much a human "failing" as a stark reality that there are limits to everything in this world, including the sympathy our hearts can generate.

There are limits to everything, that is, with the exception of constant, unceasing, guilt-saturated desperate pleas for financial help to do some good. Great, but, when we find that a very small minority of these ministries and secular organizations have defrauded people, installed gold plumbing in their own toilets instead of helping the hungry, our sympathy dries up completely. Because of one or two fraudulent ministries, we just forget about volunteer efforts still in evidence by Catholics, Baptists, Protestant groups including Mennonite disaster relief, and work of Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and others.

This work just reflects what nearly everybody in this country once did as a matter of course when a neighbor was in need, and what they did for themselves, as a matter of course, when they were in need. The people of Greensburg, Kansas, lacking water, once dug the biggest cistern in the world. Today it is covered with rubble from the May 4, 2007 tornado, almost as big as the May 3, 1999 tornado in Oklahoma. But the people of Greensburg and others are rallying to rebuild. People from everywhere are helping them. This is a positive message.

But I think Americans once did more for one another. We once pitched in to help harvest a neighbor's crops in an emergency, even to rebuild his burnt-out house or barn. Insurance and government programs have taken the place of compassionate voluntary help for neighbors. But now neighbors usually don't help each other because we don't know our neighbors in the first place, and we are so weary of all of the public appeals for help.

Seems to me that most of us don't give money or free work out of sympathy, we do it out of pathological guilt and fear. If fundraisers had to leave these "pathologies" out of it, the funds would dry up, but they always dry up anyway when these dark cards are over-played.

Anybody who has collected for United Way knows the drill. I have been turned down, or made a poor showing, in efforts to raise money for worthy causes. I know that I'm not any Sally Struthers, but I think I got turned down mostly because the people were suffering from the very same sympathy burnout that I and others often experience.

One time a farmer gave me a trailer load of cabbages and I accepted it, sure that a church would help distribute it to hungry people. Know what the pastors of 11 or 12 churches indignantly told me? "We don't have any poor people in our church!" I finally gave them to an old woman who canned them and gave the sauerkraut to people who could use it. I know that cabbage can cause gas, but I didn't mean to raise a stink by implying that the town's churches might have poor people in them!

Hey, dudes and dudettes: REAL Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or Muslim compassion is cool! It's a by-product of a life and consciousness focused on responsible, self-giving concern for people, for others as well as ourselves and our own families and friends. Guilt-induced help, if effective, is better than no help at all, but we as a society are burnt out on guilt.

Most immorality and irresponsibility that we see is a reflection of this fact. The sourness against charity that we see also stems from guilt burnout. Guilt burnout encourages rather than discouraging irresponsible sexual behavior and other "immorality"-- as irresponsible and destructive behavior is designated theologically.

Love is a discipline that must be practiced daily. It curbs fear and guilt. So maybe you and I ain't got it, maybe we suffer more from fear and guilt than we benefit from love, and, if so, I am a fine one to be pointing fingers.Then it is our biggest problem, and shouldn't you and I take care of that problem?Then we will less quickly become burned out on helping the ministries, the charities, the assistance to the needy and disaster-plagued.

But if I waited until my heart was pure before offering help, it would paralyze my efforts forever. Let the hands help and don't question the motives, for the hands that help others, by virtue of this beneficient habit, will enhance the virtues of the heart.

"Let us spray": spray compassion-in-action to the people next door as well as those far off. Pray that we all, and you yourselves, will become more and more motivated by true sympathy rather than destructive feelings like fear and guilt, fountainheads of rage as well as negativity. Sympathy and love feel better in the heart, free the mind to think of solutions, and make the hands work longer and better.

You are right to lament the decline in sympathy, for sympathy and goodwill make good bridges to other people, and guilt and fear and rage forever separate us.

Answer 9

Really?... I give out an abundance of it. I haven't run out yet. Though I prefer to give empathy when I can. (empathy: understanding someone from their own point of view. Identifying with them to understand them.)

Answer 10

Hey..shut up you half a sissy before I give you a slap!

lol....just kidding...see, there is still sympathy in the world!