On Compassion Fatigue

Compassion Fatigue (2014) by Ashley Reaks

As a full-time carer for an elderly parent, 92, with Alzheimer's, I'm intrigued by - and potentially at risk from - secondary traumatic stress (STS), or, as it's commonly known, compassion fatigue; a condition characterized by a gradual hardening of the heart and increased indifference to suffering.

For the fact is, nothing is limitless - not even love - and, sooner or later, everyone involved in providing care for the sick, the vulnerable, the poor, the feckless, or the otherwise needy and dependent, reaches the limits of their patience and concern (even if they are professionally trained to work with such people and cope with traumatic conditions).

It's little wonder then that the highest idealism often results in the most grotesque forms of abuse; for in the end, caring makes sadists of us all ... As does the endless moral insistence by the liberal elite that we in the West should assume responsibility for the entire world.

Arguably, it's not people like Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini who are inuring ordinary people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty, as some suggest. Rather, ironically, it's the bleeding-heart news media that has caused widespread compassion fatigue by constantly broadcasting graphic images of starving children, drowning migrants, and the victims of catastrophic natural events, making us all feel helpless and hopeless and, ultimately, resentful.
      

Desensitised and depressed by global suffering, it's understandable that many people eventually think fuck 'em and look away, deaf to all further cries for help, or appeals to their charity.

And it's this, I think, that explains the rise of populism; figures on the so-called alt-right understand how tired and fed up and anxious and angry people are already feeling, in a way that those on the self-righteous left refuse to. 


Note: this post was partly written in response to an article by the Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole in The Irish Times (26 June, 2018): click here to read online. Many thanks to Simon Solomon for bringing this piece to my attention.

Designer Tribalism and the Racism of Low Expectations

Romantic primitivism in all forms is absurd and deserves to be ridiculed. But when it emerges out of multiculturalism as a designer tribalism that incorporates superstition, violence, corruption, and misogyny - when it effectively keeps people locked into poverty and failure by perpetuating the soft racism of low expectations - then it demands serious critical examination.

White liberals with their touchy-feely morality and political correctness are always overly keen to show how sensitive they are to racial and religious difference. They believe it's crucial that immigrants arriving in Europe from Asia and Africa are allowed to keep their own beliefs, traditions, and practices in order to maintain their identities and self-esteem. It follows from this that they should therefore be allowed to have their own schools, places of worship, community centres, shops, newspapers, radio stations, and, perhaps, even their own legal systems.    

Ayaan Hirsi Ali ruthlessly tears this well-intentioned but profoundly misguided and ultimately disastrous way of thinking to shreds. She writes: "The idea that immigrants need to maintain group cohesion promotes the perception of them as victim groups requiring ... an industry of special facilities and assistance" and results in the creation of ghettos.  

In other words, the ideal of cultural diversity is one that ends in social failure. Rather than producing "a rich mosaic of colourful and proud peoples interacting peacefully ... it translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse."

Immigrants might preserve their arts and crafts, be able to eat the foods they like and wear traditional styles of dress, but this comes at a tremendous cost. For they are effectively complicit in a system which preserves them in the same manner it preserves endangered wild life; they are patronised and encouraged to remain loyal to a way of life which is untenable, inappropriate, and often in direct conflict with the society around them.

If this means their children do badly at school, can't find employment, and drift into crime, well, that's just too bad. Members of the liberal establishment overlook this just as they turn a blind-eye to the those unfortunate cultural practices such as honour killing and female genital mutilation. Their determined celebration of exotic otherness allows them to demonstrate just how tolerant and understanding they can be - and that's what they care about; atoning for the sins of their imperialist forefathers and exorcising their own guilt.

One is grateful to Hirsi Ali for speaking up and speaking out on this topic with her customary intelligence and integrity. 


Note: lines quoted from Ayaan Hirsi Ali can be found in Nomad, (Simon and Schuster UK Ltd., 2011), pp. 212 and 213.