When did we lose our capacity for compassion?

When Katie Hopkins tweeted that she did not care that refugees were drowning in the Mediterranean, it was motivated mainly by her narcissistic desire to grab the headlines. But, in doing so, she revealed a callous indifference to the lives of other desperate individuals which, sadly, has a disturbing echo in modern British society. Whilst Hopkins received little support for her rant she remains employed by The Sun (Britain’s bestselling ‘newspaper’) and her views represent an extreme version of a culture in which compassion plays no obvious role.

Katie Hopkins tweeting without compassion

According to Nancy Snow (1991), compassion is a natural emotion which all of us are capable of feeling. It is “an altruistic concern for the other’s good”. Which prompts me to wonder how some people seem to be able to feel no compassion at all. 

I am not concerned so much with those, like Hopkins or Farage, who feign lack of compassion as part of some deluded political project, but rather the indifference that ordinary people are encouraged to show.

We are all now familiar with the phrase ‘compassion fatigue’. According to this theory we see so much suffering on our TV screens that we become desensitized to it. I’m sure there is something in this argument, but there also seems to be something else happening. Perhaps it is true, as Susan Moeller (1999) has said, that so-called ‘compassion fatigue’ has its origins in media-led ignorance.

It is tempting to over-estimate the impact of right wing tabloids. However, it is also possible to under-estimate the insidious nature of what amounts to a propaganda campaign. It is not entirely true as Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw (1972) once remarked that the media don’t tell us what to think but they do tell us what to think about. If they don’t tell us what to think they are the gatekeepers of what information we have access to. Although the internet is creating a different type of media playing field, I am not convinced that the role of the tabloid press has been significantly undermined. Television news and the tabloid press continue to set the political agenda.

What the media cannot do is override entirely our moral intuition. Compassion is linked to an altruistic concern for the well-being of others. James Griffin (1986) , in his book Well Being, makes the point that: “We all want to do something with our lives, to act in a way that gives them some point and substance.” What this means in practice is doing things that are not simply self-interested. But, does this mean that we should be concerned for the suffering of all others regardless of whether we are capable of intervening or not?

We act to help others both from altruistic impulses and from compassion. We see this idea that there is more to life than just narrow self-interest when we show concern for others and a willingness to act to help those who may be in need. How we react may be to give to charity, to write letters to the press or MPs or to simply fume at the TV. The point is that these acts are motivated by compassion and what Max Weber called verstehen often translated as empathetic understanding.

Three year old refugee Alan Kurdî died in September 2015

When the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdî was washed up on a Mediterranean beach in September 2015 it was possible to discern a serious shift in public attitudes toward refugees. The young Syrian died alongside his elder brother and mother trying to cross the Mediterranean whilst fleeing the Civil War in Syria. That picture of the young body still dressed in sneakers lying face down in the surf was so powerful that even refugee hating newspapers such as the Daily Mail could not do anything but show compassion (Daily Mail, 2015). Suddenly the human cost of the refugee crisis hit a compassionate nerve that even the Daily Mail could not ignore.

The issue here is not whether an isolated report is “sympathetic” to refugees, but rather the cumulative effect of years of media stories about immigrants “swamping” Britain or abusing our benefits system. Carlos Vargas Silva, an Oxford-based academic has exposed as 'pure, unsupported speculation' tabloid accusations that migrants are a drain on the state (New Internationalist, 2013). Unfortunately, few people read academic research but many people read tabloid newspapers. In this environment, our basic emotional impulse of compassion for those in trouble can be overwhelmed by an imagined consensus of hostility to these “others’. In such an environment defending immigration is made very difficult and for many people it is easier to ignore the arguments and their consequences and to simply keep their thoughts to themselves.

Tabloids are inherently anti-immigrant

There is a large body of opinion in Britain which is now opposed not simply to further immigration but also to those “immigrants” already here. This is not new. Since the turn of the century polls show that over three quarters of the public want immigration reduced (Duffy and Frere Smith, 2014). 

The positive contribution of migrants to our economy and our culture is overlooked. Politicians, who should set the moral agenda, find themselves unable to defend immigration and constantly cede ground to those whose agendas are to fuel hatred for the victims of political choices made by those who defend a system which causes the very conditions it condemns.

Behind the rhetoric there is a very real issue. More people are forcibly on the move currently than at any time since the Second World War ended. According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), around 65 million people have been forcibly displaced. Of this figure, 21 million are refugees which means that they cannot easily go back to where they came. The biggest number of refugees, almost 5 million, are from Syria (UNHCR, 2015). A further 3 million are from Afghanistan and around 1 million are from Somalia. In each case the wars causing the mass exodus have the support of Western governments who profit from their propagation.

The issue however is not just where refugees are from but where do they go? A 2016 study revealed that the UK public had very little understanding of either the scale of the problem worldwide or the effect locally. Most Britons estimated the number of Syrian refugees as 300,000 at a time when it was closer to 5 million. By the same token, they believed that 10,000 Syrians had settled in Britain. The actual figure was less than half of that number. To put this in plain terms the average Briton believed 1 in 30 Syrian refugees had ended up in the UK, when the true figure was closer to 1 in 1,000 (Guardian, 2016).

 Syrian refugees mostly stay close to home (http://www.wired.co.uk/article/europe-syria-refugee-crisis-maps)

There is also a confusion in people’s minds between immigrants and refugees. The former tend to be younger, often skilled workers attracted by employment opportunities. The latter are victims of war who are ‘temporarily’ displaced. As Dana Sleiman, spokeswoman in Lebanon for UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency has said: "Every refugee I talked to said that they would like to go back to Syria. In the ideal world, refugees want to go back to Syria as soon as they can. They wish to stay here [in Lebanon] not because they like it, but because they are close to home." (AlJazeera News, 2016)

The tabloid press in Britain, in common with some politicians, have created an environment of hostility toward immigration generally and refugees specifically. Child refugees had their ages questioned by the press which, in contravention of their own code of practice, published photographs of boys aged under 16 claiming they were a lot older and demanding medical tests to establish their age. There was no sense that these were young boys already traumatized by the war they were trying to escape. Indeed, many commentators on social media branded them as “would be terrorists”.

The lack of compassion shown by some sections of the media shows them for what they are as much as the compassion the rest of us show says something about us. Although the tabloids and certain politicians have been successful in creating a hostile anti-immigrant culture in Britain, this does not mean that we should no longer appeal to people’s sense of compassion. It is not just a question of numbers or whether immigrants add more value economically, but something more fundamental.

Perhaps the question we should be asking is not whether immigration is too high, or whether it is beneficial to the country, but rather what kind of society do we want to create? Compassion is a basic human impulse in response to the suffering of others. It relies on an acknowledgement that all persons should be respected. As Aurel Kolnai (1995) has said upholding people’s dignity is “a strict moral obligation”. We do it not just because it is right, although it is, but in recognition that we belong to what Jutten (2017) has called “a community of humans” and this “brings an entitlement to expect to be treated with dignity but also a duty to reciprocate”. In other words, if we want to be treated with dignity and respect, we start by doing the same to others, all others.

Compassion is a powerful emotion and accompanied by verstehen allows us to imagine what life might be like for people in desperate situations. Those who lose their sense of compassion in pursuit of their selfish, and often discriminatory, agendas do more than just create an environment of hatred and mistrust, they also undermine our very claims to be a humane society. To feel compassion involves putting yourself in the position of the victims. Of course, if we ask people in the UK to imagine themselves in the situation of desperate Syrians it is entirely hypothetical. But we should not forget it was hypothetical for the people of Syria prior to the outbreak of the Civil War in 2011.

References

AlJazeera News, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/syrian-refugees-europe-160504111600535.html

Daily Mail, (2015) "ISIS use photo of tragic Syrian toddler Aylan in a sick propaganda article warning brutally oppressed Muslims not to flee the jihadis". Daily Mail 10 September 2015

James Griffin (1986) Well Being. Its meaning, measurement and moral importance (Oxford: Clarendon)

Guardian (2016) ‘Syrian Refugee Crisis Underestimated by British Public Finds Humanitarian Study’. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/22/syrian-refugee-crisis-underestimated-by-british-public-finds-humanitarian-study

Tim Jutten (2017) ‘Dignity, Esteem, and Social Contribution: A Recognition-Theoretical View’ The Journal of Political Philosophy

Aurel Kolnai (1995) ‘Dignity’ in R S Dillon (editor) Dignity, Character and Self-respect (London: Routledge)

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw (1972) ‘The agenda setting function of mass media’ Public opinion quarterly, Vol.36(2), pp.176-187

Susan D Moeller (1999) Compassion Fatigue. How the media sell disease, famine, war and death (New York & London: Routledge)

New Internationalist (2013) Immigration untruths New Internationalist, Oct 1, 2013

Duffy and Frere Smith (2014 Perception and Reality: Public attitudes to immigration Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute https://www.ipsos-mori.com/DownloadPublication/1634_sri-perceptions-and-reality-immigration-report-2013.pdf

Nancy Snow (1991) ‘Compassion’ American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 pp. 195-205

UNHCR, 2015 Figures at a glance http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html