how desensitised have you become?

catallus · 20-05-2015 02:13PM

I happened upon this elsewhere and I think it captures the essence of this thread, it's from "You Remind Me of Me", by Dan Chaon

He had read somewhere that babies are instinctively drawn to faces, that they will fixate even on drawings or abstract, facelike shapes, and round objects with markings that might resemble eye-mouth-nose. It was information that struck him as terribly sad, terribly lonely - to imagine the infants of the world scoping the blurry atmosphere above them for faces the way primitive people scrutinized the stars for patterns, the way castaways stare at the moon, the blinking of a satellite. It made him sad to think of the baby gathering information - a mind, a soul, slowly solidifying around these impressions, coming to understand cause and effect, coming out of a blank or fog into reality. Into a reality. The true terror, Jonah thought, the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die, but that we were all born, that we were all once little babies like this, unknowing and slowly reeling in the world, gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist and then, through no fault of our own, we had to.

bnt · 20-05-2015 02:29PM

As you get older, I think you do have a certain distance from events, which can be a good thing. You learn that prevention is always better than cure, for example, and that it helps to think about consequences before you act. When I read about migrant boats sinking in the Mediterranean, my thoughts don't go straight to "save the migrants", since any saving that can be done has already been done, and those who have died can't be brought back. So what can we do? We can stop it from happening again, preventing deaths, by tackling the reasons why migrants take to boats in the first place.

Does that mean I'm desensitised about migrants drowning in the Mediterranean? They weren't forced on to the boats - they chose to get on, and in several cases the boats sank after they all rushed to one side when they saw a rescue ship on the horizon. Compare the numbers involved with what happened on December 26, 2004: close to a quarter of a million people died in one day, through no fault of their own, after that massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia and resulting tsunami. When Stalin commented on the difference between a tragedy and a statistic, I wonder just how serious he was?

Pumpkinseeds · 20-05-2015 07:22PM

I'm pretty much desensitised to most things I see on tv, except anything that involves animal suffering.

silverfeather · 20-05-2015 07:29PM

I am not desensitized probably the opposite not that it's a good thing. I can take things too much to heart. I am a sensitive person.

I think though if you react like everything is happening to yourself then you don't really have true perspective. It's not your tragedy. If you felt more about the news then people around you or even the same that would be just weird. That would be weird fake sensitivity.

I could probably be more distant. It does not make people less kind or good as people. Infact they can be more useful in some ways.

I guess I am more desensitized than I realize I don't know ..is there a test I can take???

silverfeather · 20-05-2015 07:36PM

I just thought of something. True sensitivity may not actually be gushing emotion but perception and understanding filtered through experience.

Gushing emotional reactions are not always sensitive to a situation they are just extreme reactions to it.

20-05-2015 07:56PM

I used to be able to watch the news and be relatively unaffected, or watch violent movies and tv shows and it would be just a way to pass the time, but lately I'm more affected than I ever was before and I've no idea why.

I was watching a tv show a few months ago - I think it was The Following - and a man was being tortured in some sadistic way, and I just felt ill. I don't know how I ever watched this stuff for entertainment. Since then I find myself choking up when I hear of ISIS's latest atrocity, or earthquakes wiping out families. I'm all out of the stuff that makes it possible to watch or hear of bad things and then forget about them. I can barely get through the news, and I'm a news addict. Adverts for children or animal charities stay with me in a way they never did before. I can't even read most thrillers anymore without it lingering. I think I'm a bit broked, and I'd like to be a bit more desensitised, but I think the opposite problem is more true of society in general.

BoJack Horseman · 20-05-2015 08:00PM

I've seen the very worst that ISIS have put up online.

But if I see a headline/link regarding animal cruelty, I'll rarely bring myself to click.

RDM_83 again · 20-05-2015 08:58PM

I think if your doing something as a job/encounter a bit you get used to it and just get on with what your doing, was recently on a site with a lot of baby skeletons and its a bit grim if you sit back and think about it but it doesnt serve any purpose being morbid, for a more extreme example a causality or palliative care medic can be surrounded by people dying bad day in day out but the ones I've met have been nice well balanced fairly happy people.
There's enough work in life trying to do your best to those you can and not hurting those you can't without taking the world on your shoulders.

Agricola · 20-05-2015 09:19PM

Very. I never follow murder, rape, criminal cases in the media because I don't give a fúck not to put too fine a point on it. It's obviously awful for the people involved and their families but it has no impact on me personally, I dont know them, and unlike a lot of Irish people, I dont get off on misery. I always skip this stuff in the paper, and read about the latest economic calamity, political debacle and sporting spectacle. That about does me.

Menas · 20-05-2015 09:21PM

I thought I was fairly desensitised until a buddy told me that he watches those beheading videos. Why the fck would anyone want to watch those?

silverfeather · 20-05-2015 09:26PM

Trigger Happy wrote: »

I thought I was fairly desensitised until a buddy told me that he watches those beheading videos. Why the fck would anyone want to watch those?

I have seen one video of two men being beaten and another I am not sure of the origin of. Both shocked me I was not expecting them. I think i try to avoid those Isis things now.

But in the middle ages seeing those things in real life would have been common executions were very public.

I think desensitization is a tool of the tyrant in non democratic societies. Stop feeling=stop objecting.

TheBeardedLady · 20-05-2015 09:54PM

I don't know. I'd say not that much.

I don't watch any gore or violence whatsoever, real or fake. Don't watch horror films, fast forward films if they get violent, don't watch beheadings on Youtube. If I see any of that stuff at all, it distresses me and I can't handle it at all.

But I've been around the block and have family and friends who've been through really awful stuff that I first heard about when I was very young, so non-gory stuff that might shock others wouldn't be as shocking to me.

It's one thing reading it in a paper about strangers and another thing seeing it happen in front of you - I can't imagine ever being desensitised to the latter.

how desensitised have you become?

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