Empathy

This is kind of an odd blog post. I am not quite sure how to begin with this one. During our last class, we watched a film entitled The Collector of Bedford Street, and then were told to compare this film to another one where a baby water buffalo is attacked by a pack of lions. I know, kind of weird huh? Anyways, I guess it makes sense because in the movie, a mentally disabled man is "rescued" by his neighbors when they all come together and create a trust for him so that he will be okay when his elderly uncle dies. In the animal video, Battle at Krugger, a group of buffalo come together to save a baby from a pack of lions. As an empathetic person, I definitely felt heartbroken for both Larry, the man in the first film, and the baby buffalo. Both of them seemed so helpless until their rescue missions were carried out! At first, Larry's uncle was the one helping him, but he was getting much older and growing weary. He would soon be unable to help Larry. In the same sense, the lone buffalo was not able to help the baby when it was captured. By organizing into a strong group, both Larry's neighbors and the water buffalos were able to accomplish a task. I think that this is the same thing that applies to a community. Maybe it's true that one person all alone can't make a sufficient difference, but if a group is organized, wonderful and great things are possible.

It is important that we come together as a class and help save our poor helpless city. We as a community are the only ones who can ensure that it survives, and thus far we are not doing the best we can. It's important for us to observe the world around us and figure out what exactly needs fixed, because our baby buffalo is running out of time. I think that the more we observe and are taught to look at our surroundings, that we will definitely be able to come together and start a project to make our city more sustainable and save it's life. It's time for us to look inward and change ourselves, to become more empathetic towards our earth, then maybe we can save it. “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” -Mahatma Gandhi

The Empathetic Civilization is yet another film that was assigned for us to watch this week. The film explained how over time our race has become more accepting of those around us. We went from being accepting of tribes, to religions, to countries. Who's to say we can't take it all the way to the entire world. We need to try and get the world to empathize with our planet earth. If more people felt the pain that is inflicted on the planet, and made an effort to realize that we do in fact harm the earth, we may be able to come together to save it. However, I think that this feat may be difficult to attain when certain areas of the world are fighting thousand year old holy wars. They have been unable to agree on anything for thousands of years, and it's going to be hard to get them to even care about the earth. I'm prepared to say that the only thing that would make us all come together is if there was an attack on the earth by an extraterrestrial being. BUT the harm that is being inflicted onto the earth IS an attack. The general public of the world is simply not educated, or does not believe it is actually happening. Politics is a HUGE hinderance to saving the planet. The more I work on posts and read what is offered in this class, the more I seem to identify with being an empathizer. This is definitely something that I can add to my list of identities that I wrote for the beginning of the semester!