I'm not defeated!

Photo: Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times

I do not want you to feel sorry for me,
I just want to live in peace.
My wounds will heal.
I just want to go back home.

I feel no shame,
I just want justice.
My voice is my strength;
I'm not defeated!

I do not want charity,
but solace.
Where there is only violence,
will I find compassion?

(ES)

Chance Tombola, 9, and her aunt, Jeanne Birengenyi, 34, both among the innumerable rape survivors in the war in eastern Congo. Chance's parents were killed in the war, as was Jeanne's husband. Given the stigma surrounding rape in Congo, they showed tremendous courage in speaking about their experiences.

Shortening distances

(ES)

Means of transport have shortened the distance between towns and cities in this global world.
The information and communication technologies have shortened the distance in the transmission of information.
The scientific and technological progress has shortened the distance between our planet and the universe.
However, there is one thing in what human being has not made ​​a historic leap like that has occurred in other aspects of science and technology in the modern ages. I mean the mental distance between the welfare of the few and the suffering of a majority.
We shorten distances to the extent that we manage to connect in a way more quickly, agile and simply. Today we can cross an ocean in hours, and know what happens in our antipodes with a single click.

However, we only experience and share the suffering of the others when we feel it very close to us. And only through empathy will get to commitment and action in advocacy of others with which we identify. It is precisely this identification what makes us feel firsthand the threat that triggers our commitment.

We have found means and tools to connect with each other, no matter how far they are physically. But there is still an astronomical distance in the minds and hearts of people. The distance that allows many to live stranger to the suffering of others, except that the misfortune of these affects the welfare of those.

Only when we bridge that mental and emotional distance, as the result of a individual process of transformation, we will be able to speak of a truly mankind progress. Perhaps the greatest challenge of modern society.

Technology has changed the way we connect to the world. Empathy will change the world.

The good samaritan (after Delacroix) 1890 - Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Kröller-Müller Museum

A pseudopathic society

An Afghan mother and her daughter begging on a street in Kabul
© Mohammad Popal / IRIN

(ES)

If the human body was not able to recognize the disease. If the brain did not identify any threats and did not send signals of pain or physical discomfort; or if simply omitted the symptoms of a disease, what would be the result? Probably the disease would spread by the organism to lead to death.

The human brain is based on the perceived stimuli, learning, experience and culture to take decisions aimed to preserve life. However, the rupture between the perceived and the reality, which is known as pseudopathy, can lead directly to the opposite, the disappearance of life.

Today's society is moving in the field of pseudopathy. 

A society facing to real systemic threats that does not perceive any signal that invite to act, or else omits these signals to the extent that their status quo is not particularly affected. And in the opposite direction, a society that laments and mobilizes itself by trivial problems or banal events

Pseudopathic society can only help increase the social and environmental injustice.

To the extent that we connect our perception, free from manipulation, with the global reality that surrounds us, we are connecting with those who suffer, by making ours their suffering.

From pseudopathy to empathy: the path that society must cover beset by the current economic crisis, but above all, the underlying crisis of values ​​in modern society.


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