“Empathy and Compassion have always formed the core principles in all world religions. Certainly, they are essential for the ultimate survival of our species”….-Karen Armstrong,
19 December 2014.
On a somber, spring afternoon in Minneapolis, a man was pinned to the ground by four police officers. With a knee to his neck he was brutally strangled to death in public glare, despite his desperate pleas for a breath. When the incident became public knowledge, the establishment as usual, tried so hard to shield the murderers by obscuring evidence. Thankfully, Darnella Frazier, 17, High School junior, was at the right spot at the right time. She filmed George Floyd’s gruesome killing with a camera phone, from the vantage view of a bystander. First, that footage ignited public outrage with incendiary protests in America and around the world. More importantly, that act of virtue was of immense value to the Jury in serving justice to the perpetrators. It was a spectacular demonstration of the power of video photography in solving controversial, criminal cases.
Deservedly, Darnella was later awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for courage in journalism.
Today, I shall neither be applauding the heroism of Frazier nor celebrating the triumph of the camera phone.
On the contrary, this essay shall be exploring and exposing the dark side of a revolutionary technology, as it relates to empathy (or lack of it) and social media.
In the course of daily human experience, certain moments are better left in the safe confines of individual memory. They do not deserve to be shared using the plethora of imaging devices and applications available in our time. These are moments of extreme human suffering and death: hanging, beheading, bomb explosion, criminal organ harvesting, rape, ritual murder, suffocation, electrocution, plane crash, drowning, usage of poisonous gas, ghastly road accident etc. These occasions of torture or violent death should never be captured on video or photography solely for the purpose of media sensationalism. They should be repugnant and revolting to the conscience of any normal being with a soul.
These moments not only etch indelibly on the viewer’s memory, they also wield the potential to twist the human psyche in highly unpredictable ways.
In this regard, let us rewind to March 26, 1993. A bewildered world was greeted by a bizarre photograph that appeared on the front page of ‘The New York Times’. It was entitled ‘The Struggling Girl’. A depressing image of a famine-stricken child, laboriously crawling to reach a nearby UNESCO food center, with a hooded vulture in the background, touched the soul of humanity. Apparently, the patient vulture was waiting for that child to die. The photojournalist , Kevin Carter became an instant celebrity and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his dexterity in journalism. But curiously, he took his own life 4 months after the prize, despite the global applause that trailed his snapshot. What was it that drove Kevin to suicide? Was his psyche altered irreversibly, by his apparent lack of empathy and compassion? Did he suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? His autopsy left more questions than answers. We may never unravel the actual cause of Carter’s tragic end. Critics have condemned his preference for the potential fame and fortune that would accrue from his photograph, over a simple act of charity to save the life of that child.
Love, empathy and compassion are some of the most pristine qualities that define our humanity and perhaps our god-likeness. When they are lacking, we become nothing but soulless creatures in an unfeeling Universe. If Jesus Christ came to the world in our time, He might not be spared the indignity of a video coverage of ‘His Crucifixion’. But even in the midst of that irate and unthinking crowd who led Him to Golgotha, there were still compassionate men and women: Simon the Cyrene who helped Him with the cross; Joseph of Arimathea who who took His body for a decent burial; Mary Magdalene and her friends, to name but a few.
In the thick of warfare, compellingly, time and attention are still dedicated to the evacuation and treatment of the wounded or the dying. Comrades, even enemy troops, do not waste precious time taking pictures or videos of the fallen.
What happened to the mindset of this generation? Where are the lessons from the beautiful story of ‘The Good Samaritan’?
There is something dark, cold-blooded and evil about people who are comfortable in the glare of human suffering and death. There is something certainly satanic about people who do nothing but stand and watch with wry excitement, the unfolding of a human tragedy. To go further and capture these moments, through the cold eye of a camera lens, offends every sense of morality and decency. To gleefully share same online is revealing of a manifestly depraved mind.
With a heavy heart and tearful eyes, I am compelled to recall the tragic end of Dr. Chike Akunyili. As he lay wriggling helplessly on that dirty pavement; struggling to sit up in a final bid to live; with half of his face mangled in flesh and blood, someone still had the calm to video those final, searing seconds. Unlike the case of Floyd, the footage of Chike’s murder did not capture the killers. Therefore, it would serve no purpose in the future prosecution of his killers, whenever they are found. Dr. Akunyili who spent his life saving lives and alleviating human suffering, could not find help on his day of trouble. Instead, the teeming crowd that gathered was unsparing in their lack of empathy and compassion. Like the hooded vulture in Carter’s photograph, they waited patiently for Chike to die. Armed with a camera phone, they were cold and silent to the anguish of the dying man, as they filmed those last grisly moments. On the other side of the camera lens, they became instantly loud and viral to the world via the social media.
That was patently cruel and immoral. The footage of Dr. Akunyili’s final struggle represents the best depiction of the death of empathy and compassion in a society that is ironically alive with religion.
Could these numbness and hypocrisy have something to do with the collective conscience of an oppressed citizenry?
Unknown to most of us, we might have surreptitiously built a reprobate society. A gang of renegades who kill their mothers in blood chilling, money rituals; a generation of men who decapitate one of their own and play mock football with his head; a clique of politicians who continually plunder the state to impoverish the masses.
People whose minds have been seared and scorched with images of hunger, anguish, suffering and death should never be trusted with governance and future leadership.
Victor Amadi is a medical practitioner based in Onitsha.
