Feelings Matter: Why Has Our Society Become Apathetic

There was a time when people use to understand each other’s feelings – just by observing other’s facial expression and body language. But now days we do not understand each other, even when someone explicitly express and communicate their feelings, worries and problems. Pakistan has seen an increase in poverty over the last decade, and this year we have been affected by Inflation, Floods and Dengue – but despite this we see very few are helping others in remote parts of Pakistan, we see very less activism from our youth – particularly youth from upper class sector does nothing – just commenting and sharing flood related posts on social media. Why have our society become so self-centered, unemphatic and emotion less.

As per my understanding and observation due to 2 reasons our society has become so careless and emotion less which are: income inequality and capitalism. Income inequality in recent times have increased multifold. Rich people have become richer because they have, they capacity to borrow loans, their assets value have increased and have access to network and other resource which they can use to increase their wealth. Income inequality has also created a class system, the rich people live on the other side of the city – where as poor people live at the other side of the city. This distance is not only in terms of location, but also in terms of feelings and understanding each other. Due to the distance, people do not understand the challenges that a person from low socioeconomic background faces – challenges of water, travel, grocery, kids’ health and what not. This is one reason why we have become unemphatic and lost in our own world.

The other reason is the system of brutal capitalism and material that we have create. Everyone is running after wealth accumulation, lifestyle upgrade, asset possession and money in general – at the expense of relationships, health, quality time, meaningful conversation, helping less privilege people and many other factors. The problem what this mentality is that it makes a person worse than animal. For example, a loin when he is hungry will eat only one deer and leave the rest of other loins to have. He will only eat to an extent that will satisfy his hungry! But as compared to a person who is in love of wealth – he may harm everyone that comes in the way of this target not caring about what impact his action may have caused.

Now the solution to the identified problem is self-reflection and social awareness. We can increase our social awareness by taking some solid action, making goals of helping those in need and setting up an action plan along with our daily work routine. Social awareness can be increased by visiting old age homes, volunteering with NGOs, meeting disabled person, visiting grave yard, visiting areas that are less privilege, spending time with less privilege people – this sort of activities should even happen at school level so students from a young age develop the sense of social responsibility.?