“Empathy is a finite resource. You can run out. As a normal, psychological response, you cannot give yourself of again and again and again without replenishing.” — Emmett Fitzgerald
I keep thinking of the psychologist Paul Slovic’s term “compassion fade,” or our inability to sustain empathy as greater numbers of people require aid. Slovic has pointed out that we have a much easier time empathizing with single individuals than with nameless statistics. So when we hear of numbers like 108 million people being displaced globally, 13,000 killed in the war in Sudan, or 30,000 people killed in Gaza, it doesn’t fully register with us. As the numbers go up, and the people with power seem unwilling to stop it, we can feel numb.
But when I see a single innocent girl in Gaza —not much older than my daughter— crying that she just wants her leg back again, any numbness instantly fades away.
When I see a girl horrifically burned, I’m reminded of Kim Phuc (“the girl in the picture”) and the children running down the road near their village of Trang Bang. Her photo entered global consciousness in 1972 as she ran, naked and screaming with arms outstretched, after being burned by napalm. A contemporaneous editorial in the New York Post wrote that “The picture of the children will never leave anyone who saw it.” Nor should it.
Perhaps things are different now in the age of the Internet, as so many images flicker past our eyes and we are induced to process others’ experiences, including their suffering, at a higher speed than just a few decades ago.
To the extent that we can, we should try to resist the notion that the firehose of suffering in front of us is not a reason to normalize it or accept it as inevitable. Suffering is an inherent component of armed conflict, but the decision to inflict suffering on others is a choice.
Patrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D. 
I won’t comment on Gaza, Patrick as it’s so complicated simple statements require endless qualification. But in general (I know that’s just another fabricated concept) I think I can comment on ‘compassion fatigue’ (the term that was omnipresent in the 1980s relating to Indochina.
It’s not always a negative concept. In the early refugee exodus from Indochina there was real fear among those exiting — even if it was mostly fear of hunger rather than persecution, most early refugees deserved ‘compassion’. The exodus itself (some 10% of the Laos population) helped correct the home situation. In general (again that unavoidable word) things got better in the refugee-exporting countries as compassion-fatigue set in throughout the refugee-receiving/aiding countries — to the final point where a second generation of ‘refugees’ were repatriated by force with full UNHCR involvement (that was my main job!) and such repatriation was met with zero protest from those countries that had, it seems, suddenly realised those refugees they had so enthusiastically welcomed were in their new countries to stay. As compassion fatigue grew it could have been charted in dollars on financial donations received by such agencies as UNHCR. As funding slipped away, even the most dedicated began to ask, ‘Are these really refugees from persecution?’ The answer of course — for Indochina — was no, they are mostly people in search of a better life (aren’t we all?) and we should find solutions other than resettlement — assisted repatriation being the obvious one and, as it turned out, one far more successful than resettlement.
It is probably necessary to distinguish between compassion fatigue (or whatever similar term) and something that has no ready term: the ability to ’harden’ one’s feelings for individual tragedies (such as the legless girl you mention) in order to cope with a greater problem that might indeed be measured statistically in order to obtain necessary funding and apply relevant assistance en masse without recourse to any individual’s particular needs. That sounds hard and in a way it is. But I know I simply could not have functioned in the First Malawian Emergency had I given in to immediate ‘compassion’ and not worked with only the big picture in mind.
Let me give one example that stays in my mind after over three decades. A woman — a physically beautiful woman (for a young man that always makes tragedy harder) — running from her village in Mozambique, with gunshots directed at her and others (but I focused on her) coming from her village. I was on a dirt road ‘border’ that for some odd reason I could never work out was respected by both sides in the Mozambigue civil war. If those fleeing got across that little strip of dirt they were ‘safe’. That woman did. She was holding her tiny baby when running. She was holding it in her stumps.
We — just me and two Malawians — got her into the Land cruiser. She was bleeding badly. Two tourniquets saved her life. The provincial hospital luckily was only ten minutes away. She was saved. Later, after several operations in a very simple field hospital, still holding her baby, she told me her story. Some 20 young men with guns and machetes had come to her village. There was nobody in her village on either side in the conflict. The invaders shot the village men and raped the younger women, including this one. During a lull when the invaders were drinking, a group of young women grabbed their children and ran towards the border. She was caught holding her baby. Both her arms were cut off at the elbow. She was left to bleed to death. She picked up her tiny baby and ran. Probably about half those who ran never made it. There was nothing we could do but wait on the border road.
That was an almost daily event. My job was to drive along that long border and radio when I found refugees or fighting near the border. I was accompanied by just one armed guard. He was under orders not to shoot into Moxambique. He could shoot only if Mozambicans crossed into Malawi with guns.
The photos I took of the armless woman holding her baby were considered by Geneva to be too horrific to be used for fund-raising. I took similarly horrific pictures of bodies on a beach in Vietnam half-eaten by sharks — presumably a refugee boat had sunk or pirates had thrown the people overboard (yes, it happened, there were just too many stories for all to be fabrications — and those bodies on the beach were not fabricated).
Did I feel compassion for the many individuals involved? In the end I’m not sure it’s the right word. My job did not allow the luxury of individual compassion or even group compassion. Feelings had no place if I were to function. But something stays in the memory after decades. Compassion alone serves no purpose. Compassion with financial assistance sometimes prolongs a situation beyond the initial emergency that prompted the compassion. I don’t know what is the ‘correct’ response. Give money to a beggar and the beggar continues to beg, although you might for awhile feel better about life.
There is a place for compassion — it’s a human feeling like love and hate — but compassion without a resolution of the problem that caused it can prolong the problem.
It’s as complicated as a human being.
Thank you, Robert. You always enlighten me with your on the ground experiences and insights. Though I never saw the Mozambican woman, that mental image will stay with me too. And you definitely made me think about the function of compassion and the larger picture.