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VIEWPOINT
Are we desensitized?

Leon Wieler

I was in my senior year studying International Development at Menno Simons College in Winnipeg. I was sitting in a cozy, sunlit classroom surrounded by an extraordinarily bright and experienced group of students in by far the most intellectually demanding class I had ever taken. We were probing the foundations of human inequality when one student began, to her embarrassment, to sob uncontrollably. The university classroom is not the place for tears, and this ordinarily articulate student understood that very well. The rest of the class looked away in a gentle silence. She soon regained her composure, and the class continued. Then another student began to sob. I think we all understood, in a general sense, the source of the tears. I choked back my own.

My teary eyes stemmed from a thorough shaking of my intellectual foundations. I felt like a 17th-century slave trader who suddenly realized the gravity of his actions but was unable to give up the wealth and prestige that his position offered. My sense of balance was wobbly for weeks, and I have not yet fully recovered.

James Toews’s article “But are we OK?” (MBH, March 2) reminded me of this incident. Toews suggests that despite our feelings of being “OK”, “few of us are willing to recognize the negative influences of the media on ourselves.” I think it is fairly obvious that the media can, and does, desensitize/numb us to a wide variety of issues. One example that springs to mind is a well-known international aid group that has been effectively using videos of human suffering to fill its coffers for many years. As the years went by, this aid group found that revenues were declining and therefore increased the graphic content and emotional manipulation of donors to maintain cash flow. Today most of us can watch horrendous videos of human suffering with little effect except for a passing twinge of pity. We can listen to absolutely incredible statistics, and our eyes glaze over with inertial stupidity. The watchers of these videos have been desensitized to human suffering and either do not recognize this or choose not to acknowledge it. Are we, who claim to love our neighbour as ourselves, still “OK” if we have been desensitized to human misery?

To be fair, the videos played only a supporting role in the desensitization process. Other factors, such as racism, greed, fear and a sense of helplessness, contributed greatly. The fact remains that we who claim to love our neighbour should be very concerned about anything that impedes our ability to love.

We need to examine our lives carefully for evidence of desensitization. For example, why am I so concerned about my RRSPs when half the global population lives on less than $2 per day? If given a choice between purchasing a bigger home and assisting the 12 million children under the age of 5 that die every year of malnutrition and preventable diseases, why do I always choose the former? Why does my church spend its budget to benefit the “spiritual health” of its wealthy (by global comparison) adherents when oceans of parents cannot find clean water for their kids?

The process of carefully examining our own actions for evidence of desensitization is not pleasant. We may find that the ideas we clung to so tenaciously for so many years are bankrupt. This is, in part, what my classmates and I discovered sitting in that cozy, sunlit classroom.

Leon Wieler lives in Winnipeg, Man.

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Last modified March 30, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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