Why You Should Care

 

Caitlin Johnstone makes an eloquent case for empathy and connectedness and morality:

Why should you care about Gaza? Because we can’t keep living like this. Our species cannot continue living on this planet as though what happens to other people and other organisms around the world has nothing to do with us. We don’t live in that kind of world anymore.

For better or for worse, we now live on a planet with eight billion humans who are no longer separated by distance in the way we used to be. This species which spent so much of its development relating to itself in units of small tribes is now an intimately networked global community whose behavior is literally altering the face of this planet, and we need to start acting like it. We need to start doing what Einstein called “widening our circle of compassion” beyond our small tribal units of people we personally know and like, or we simply won’t be able to survive and thrive on this planet.

The inability of ordinary people to think globally is directly affecting our lives in the here and now.

I agree with everything that she says there.  Unfortunately I believe, and have said so many times at this blog, that there are large numbers of people (perhaps the majority) who are simply not wired to care about things beyond their immediate circles of self/family/friends/community.  Which isn't to say that they're callous and indifferent about human suffering.  If they become aware of it they'll probably respond in a decent fashion.  It's getting such people aware of things in the wider world that is the challenge.

People who don't read.  People who watch the news but who are so zoned-out that it hardly registers.  People who are so incurious about the world they live in that they can't find their own country on a map.  People who for all intents and purposes imagine that people drove cars in the Middle Ages.

Which is what makes it so criminal for the CBC to have such limited coverage of a live-streamed genocide.  Right-wing shlock outlets like SUN Media or The National Pest will cover Israel's genocidal policies and the protests against them from a pro-zionist, pro-genocide perspective because they're scum.  The people at the CBC know better but, nonetheless, have a job to do in the propaganda system.  So they ignore or downplay the genocide.

Johnstone's article shows the serious consequences of business as usual.

This image search led me to something personally interesting.