As an activist for social justice, in the middle of informing someone you’ve probably run into some folks who suddenly stop you, plug their ears, and quip, “I don’t want to know.” I understand the “pain of knowing,” but why are some people more outraged by the sharing of the facts than of the facts themselves – shouldn’t they be outraged that injustices are happening at all?
I don’t have an answer – I’m wondering what you think…
Is there a broken or incomplete feedback loop that goes something like this, “Oh, that’s painful information >> it’s hurting me >> if I don’t hear/see it, then I won’t be in pain.” But the painful act didn’t stop, just the awareness stopped. What seems to be missing is ACTION. Maybe the feedback loop could be more complete, “Oh, that’s painful information >> it’s hurting me >> because it is hurting others >> how can I stop the pain of others so that I can stop my pain?”
This would be the development of “us” – recognizing that we are all ONE, that we are interconnected, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (Martin Luther King, Jr.).
How do we get people to develop beyond the “me-me-me” to the “us”?
Thank you for your input!
🙂 matt
A Life Connected 
7 comments
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October 16, 2009 at 11:10 pm
bmb
Follow the money trail. They;re all in cahoots
October 17, 2009 at 1:47 am
Jamie
It is like the phone salesperson that rings up and say "Would you like cheaper phone calls", likewise people are not stupid and know exactly where you are going when you confront them with environment or animal suffering, they know you will be asking them to do an unselfish act and inconvenience them. Selfishness is all around in many forms, why are people surprised. Though some people do unselfish acts it is often done publically for praise so it is rarely completely an unselfish act.
October 18, 2009 at 11:58 pm
mattbear
But isn't there more to it than money and selfishness? Regarding money, yes, unthinking businesses are in it entirely for the money. But what about individuals? Sure we've come to think cheaper is better, but people do lots of things that are inconvenient and cost them a lot of money. They buy things they don't need. They entertain themselves with food and drinks.
And regarding selfishness… aren't kindness and compassion all around us, too? Is "selfishness" really our first/best response? If it is, how can we help others make compassion their first response?
And what about consumer choices? I can see that clothes and cars and such might be done for public approval, but consider food choices — most of what we eat is done in relative isolation (unless we're eating out with friends, etc.). Aren't food choices the perfect opportunity to perform an "unselfish" act. We buy organic to keep chemicals off the land and off of farm workers and their families, to keep water clean, and to protect wildlife. We make vegan choices because we don't want to support cruelty to animals, environmental degradation, and because we support feeding everyone on the planet.
We're not asking people to stop doing what they're doing necessarily, we're inviting them to make a Nonviolent choice.
What do y'all think? How do we help others beyond the "me-me-me" to the "us"? How did you do it?
🙂 m
October 30, 2009 at 11:44 am
jackie mackay
Hi Matt
There's a difference in my way of thinking between 'la-la-la' I don't want to hear it and hearing and seeing and responding with compassion.
Some people simply have not developed the ability to understand what they hear and even less what they can DO about it. I have friends who are what I call 'orc spotters'. Yes the 'orcs are coming to attack humanity and to separate us from nature that's a fact – but only because we buy into their plans, use their money, pay the usury, flock to be good society contributors, compare and compete with our peers, family and neighbours, join the army (sometimes only to find a community to be in) and continue to gamble on the stock exchanges and take the authority and scientist view as the 'real' thing while all else is snake oil, and above all watch the TV and read papers and get affected deeply by that and the junk gmo infested food and fluoride poisoned water, inject our children and babies with poisons and batter them with lies and conflict – often in sugary cotton candy voices.
In other words we buy into it and while we are doing so get into opposition with what we are buying willingly of our own free will.
That's a recipe for a cacophony of conflicting thoughts, ideas, emotions that cause us deeper distress than we can imagine since it all looks so good on the surface.
Bruce Lipton gave a talk to Google staff and the video is quite hard core. I think it may have been his first major gig – he talks very rapidly. I had to watch the first one three times – the second half totally blew my mind.
Now he's a recognised luminary and has been joined by 40 or so of frontier scientists because what he says is the business!
I threw out the TV (half measures don't work for me;-) and started some serious rethinking. Google have split the 3 hours up but it's better to just pause when you want to. I hope you enjoy it.
I was inspired to write a book about communication and to give it to the Net. It's on http://www.perfect8.co.uk/Blog.
All the best
Jackie
January 28, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Scott Vien
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February 16, 2010 at 1:52 am
Candy Floss Machine
Hey man, I was just looking through your website and decided to load the RSS feed, but it is not working in my webbrowser (I’m looking at it using Opera) any specific way to get around that?
February 19, 2010 at 9:18 am
Connector
yikes, i don’t know, sorry. i’m not a web guru… just the far-too-occasional blogger trying to save the world.