Do We Have A Compassion Deficit?

My fellow Change-ster Michael has a bit (just a bit) of a snarky post up at Humanitarian Relief, in response to a recent Nick Kristof piece on the marketing of the humanitarian cause. Humorous, no doubt, especially the grand conclusion (and, point taken) --- but I also think that Kristof hits at least one legitimate point for serious discussion:

"A number of studies have found that we are much more willing to donate to one needy person than to several. In one experiment, researchers solicited donations for a $300,000 fund that in one version would save the life of one child, and in another the lives of eight children. People contributed more when the fund would save only one life."

Kristof, of course, is not the first to make this observation. Eddie Izzard makes a similar point, and far more humorously than even Mr. Kleinman (no offense):

"Pol Pot killed 1.7  million people. We can't even deal with that. We think, if somebody kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, and that's what they do. Twenty people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. Over that, we can't deal with it. Somebody's killed 100,000 people, we're almost going, ‘Well done! You killed  100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning!'"

So, why? Why is it that we can empathize on an individual level, but seem desensitized when faced with death on a mass scale, or when suffering is anonymous and distant? Why do we tune out to large figures rather than seeing the individual behind each number?

There are notable exceptions, of course: The mobilization of assistance in response to the 2004 Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina was phenomenal. But these were responses to a cataclysmic event, not ongoing commitments to Good Samaritan-ism.

Stephanie, another Change.org colleague, wrote an excellent post on very mainstream basis of the animal rights ethos today where she argues that nonviolence and compassion are "the most unextreme philosophy [she] can imagine." Yet the human capacity for empathy never seems to reach its full potential --- or at least, falls short of the human capacity for cruelty.

Why does our compassion get lost in the shuffle of large-scale suffering?

[Photo: An American soldier tries to comfort a wounded child after a suicide bomb attack on the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2005. Chosen because, when I think of compassion, I think of this photo.]