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From: colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (George Sicherman)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: emotional pain
Message-ID: <985@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 5-Feb-84 22:42:34 EST
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.985
Posted: Sun Feb  5 22:42:34 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 09:48:59 EST
References: <1379@pur-ee.UUCP>, <3482@utzoo.UUCP>, <525@orca.UUCP>
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 20

Second-hand "emotional pain" (is this a new euphemism for grief?) doesn't
come easily to all of us.  A young woman I know used to save the product
(bar) codes from everything she bought because she heard that they could
be used to assist cripples somewhere.  The friend who told her this had
been pulling her leg, but did that make her grief and pity any less real?
(This is not a rhetorical question!)

Maybe what we need is some sort of neural hookup that lets us suffer directly
with disaster victims.  Merely reading about it isn't as satisfying somehow.
(On the other hand, if it weren't for the news media, our national reserves
of pity would dwindle alarmingly.)

It's natural to grieve when somebody you love suffers.  But natural
sympathy has limits - very narrow ones for most people.  I would sooner
lose a thousand strangers in a disaster than one casual acquaintance.
(And in general I do!)

Hope this helps. :-)
			G. L. Sicherman
			...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!colonel