Why am I content to spend $143 on things I don’t need when 25 million people starve to death every day?

Poverty just doesn't break people's hearts like it used to. Everyone knows that "you can't throw that out, there are starving kids in Africa!" and sees commercials for ChildFund. We know that there are people on the other side of the world who need us. Statistics can surprise people and photos can cause them to take pity on those suffering in our world, but does anyone really care?

A while ago, we talked about how after you are exposed to something more and more, you become desensitized to it and are no longer as affected by at as you were upon first seeing it. I think the main reason people can bear to live with knowing that other people are starving to death is that we are too used to it. We can hear the same facts over and over again, see pictures of starving children, and realize that there is suffering in our world, but everything is too easily ignored. The people become objectified in our minds. We can zone out during a commercial or turn off the television. These people who need us can be put away and forgotten about.

In class, we talked about how Mrs. Knittel would turn off the television when ChildFund commercials came on when her son was little so he would not become comfortable with or desensitized to them. I think this is the right thing to do, and for our country to wake up and start to help others, we need to take poverty seriously and remember that the poor are people who cannot be ignored.