Altruism:
"I asked myself over and over again, why me? Among the many millions of people in the world, why did this happen to me? I always had the thought I was not born into this world to be locked up and to allow my whole life to be ruined.
"I despaired over this injustice. I felt like a poor battery hen or battery chicken. You [meaning the interviewer] have obviously seen my dungeon on television and in the media, so you know how small it was. It was desperate."
"You shouldn't talk to me so much about Mr Priklopil because he cannot defend himself any more. I don't find it very nice to complain about a dead person, especially because of his mother. I had bad thoughts. Sometimes I dreamt that if I owned an axe, I would chop his head off."
These are words from Natascha, the girl that was kidnapped and hidden for 8 years of her development.
The initial question that sprang to my mind is: how does a person under such conditions learn compassion like that? Granted, she did admit that she wanted to kill the man, but the preceeding statement was that we shouldn't talk about this person when he's not around.
Was it her upbringing prior to her abduction? Did her parents instill in her these morals before she was abducted?
Or did they come about through her abduction? Did they come about from her having been in a condition that she never wants another human being ot experience?
I guess, then, the quesiton is rather: how do we, not under these conditions, learn compassion like that? Where is that compassion instilled in us? Is that why we don't see compassion in the world? Becuase people are egocentric, and don't have the foresight to see that they don't want something bad to happen to another human being?
And then the quesiton that rises, as this is true that we need experience to empathise: why? Why can't we decenter? Why are we trapped to our own heads?
"I asked myself over and over again, why me? Among the many millions of people in the world, why did this happen to me? I always had the thought I was not born into this world to be locked up and to allow my whole life to be ruined.
"I despaired over this injustice. I felt like a poor battery hen or battery chicken. You [meaning the interviewer] have obviously seen my dungeon on television and in the media, so you know how small it was. It was desperate."
"You shouldn't talk to me so much about Mr Priklopil because he cannot defend himself any more. I don't find it very nice to complain about a dead person, especially because of his mother. I had bad thoughts. Sometimes I dreamt that if I owned an axe, I would chop his head off."
These are words from Natascha, the girl that was kidnapped and hidden for 8 years of her development.
The initial question that sprang to my mind is: how does a person under such conditions learn compassion like that? Granted, she did admit that she wanted to kill the man, but the preceeding statement was that we shouldn't talk about this person when he's not around.
Was it her upbringing prior to her abduction? Did her parents instill in her these morals before she was abducted?
Or did they come about through her abduction? Did they come about from her having been in a condition that she never wants another human being ot experience?
I guess, then, the quesiton is rather: how do we, not under these conditions, learn compassion like that? Where is that compassion instilled in us? Is that why we don't see compassion in the world? Becuase people are egocentric, and don't have the foresight to see that they don't want something bad to happen to another human being?
And then the quesiton that rises, as this is true that we need experience to empathise: why? Why can't we decenter? Why are we trapped to our own heads?
posted by Thinker Joe | 10:00 AM
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