Sympathy shmympathy

You know, sometimes the sympathetic bent of our generation seems simply silly. I know there's more to life than cold rationale and objectivity, but emotionalism is going to kill us all, just mark my words. We sympathize with anyone we see as any kind of a victim. And sooner than later this sympathy is going to engender its own victims, will we sympathize with them too? To borrow a phrase from M.J. Keenan, the "collective Judas" is rapidly diminishing. What the deuce does that mean? you ask. I mean that sooner or later, there will be no one left in the bank of people at whom we can point fingers. Now don't get me wrong, the blame game sucks, but we can't be afraid to lay blame where blame is due. There are culpable people.

It's all well and good to sympathize with the victim and hold the perpetrator of the crime guilty. But I see so much now of sympathizing with the criminal. We use psychological analysis and shift the blame to some entity that only exists in abstractville. We transfer the demons of responsibility into a swarm of pigs and drown them all. And that's the end of that.

Why do we do this? Why is sympathy some kind of generational zeitgeist? I think we feel that we can vindicate ourselves through it. And it's not just an attitude either. We send casseroles or babysit children, and this action is wonderful and loving and good. But we can't just stop there and not fight evil in the first place. We have to take action against things that leave victims behind. There's my weekly two cents. Take it for what it's worth. I know I ramble, sorry. I can only imagine how Faulkner felt. And none of my diatribes are meant to be exhaustive statements. Many of them are specific rather than general cases. But that doesn't mean they're not valid points.

Have a good weekend. It's Fall Break here! Yeah! Meaning...we don't have class on Friday? Nice break. How about they just mail me a check for two hours instead. I'm going to stop now. Bye.

Nords