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Pastimes : The Sauna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (807)	7/15/2001 12:02:29 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1857

may mean that the next case of child abuse (like the one on the cover of today's NYT, for example) will be met with emotional numbing. It may. But, on the other hand, our tolerating acting out in uncontrolled rage against helpless animals does nothing to stem the acting out in uncontrolled rage against helpless children or not quite so helpless adults. Brutality is brutality. Rage is rage. We need to stop both in their tracks, not wait until he or someone else throws a kid into traffic. I don't have any way of knowing for sure which is more damaging long term, draining the empathy pool or tolerating outrageous acts against lesser creatures. My gut tells me it's the latter. I don't think this is a zero sum game. Karen

To: Poet who wrote (807)	7/15/2001 12:27:30 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1857

...a discrete amount of empathy at any given time I think this falls into the same category as to why a single child trapped in a well somewhere is a much bigger story that an earthquake in China that kills 10,000 children. Along with most others, I would be totally captivated by the first incident, and rather indifferent to the second (being honest here). I don't think it is a matter of limits to our empathy or sympathy. Perhaps it is that the particular is more comprehensible and meaniningful to most of us than the general. As to the dog, we run into a lot of people, some of whom are our own children<ggg>, who are polite but who obviously cannot fathom why we waste so much affection on our two Goldens when we could be directing it at our own grandchildren as well as other various and sundry infants. The only answer I have is that I happen to like bonding with another species whose virtues I find more appealing than humans in many respects. I just try to spread my affection around as best I can, trying not to run out of it entirely. I happened to be in San Jose when that incident occurred, and I was never so happy as when as guy was caught. JC