Told to feel this, feel that, 'I no longer feel anything at all'

From American Digest

I once gave to all who asked. Now I give to none. Once a year I write checks to funds for widows and orphans of police, firemen, and soldiers killed in the line of duty. Beyond that, I find I can no longer spare a quarta. And when I hear, in the back of my mind, the old Depression anthem “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” I find that although I can spare it, I no longer want to give it.

It has taken decades of ceaseless hectoring but at long last my compassion account in the Bank of Human Kindness is overdrawn. I’m tapped out. I still try to care but I find, if I am honest, I couldn’t care less.

I suppose this makes me a bad person. In the land that is more and more ruled by those eager to cadge money from me or pick my pockets “for the common good” I’m just no damned good to any of them. It doesn’t bother me any more. I have become, as the song says, “comfortably numb.”

I’ve been told, so often and so stridently, to feel this and to feel that and to feel for the downtrodden of the world, that I find I no longer feel anything at all. I don’t think I’m alone in not caring. I think caring and compassion, now that it has been institutionalized enough to demand caring and compassion, has finally found its limit.

http://americandigest.org/against-compassion/#more-4247

 

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