Madeleine:Compassion Fatigue

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never be any peace and joy fo me until there is peace and joy finally for you too’Frederick Buechner

Today, I read Julia Taylor’s article about compassion fatigue and couldn’t get it out of my head…her words haunted my preparations for my son’s birthday…

Almost a year ago, when Madeleine McCann went missing, I was genuinely saddened by her disappearance. But now I’m not. That sounds heartless doesn’t it?

When I studied the sociology of news at university (I know, I could have been finding a cure for cancer, but unfortunately my brain was geared to more Mickey Mouse matters), a phrase that was bandied about was “compassion fatigue”.

 It came to a head for me when I was working in Essex, and several bored housewives decided they would mark the 100th day since Madeleine went missing with the release of 100 balloons on a school playing field. I think my first question was, well, why? And the chief bored housewife organiser did not have an answer.
Okay she did. Her answer was: “To raise awareness.” This was at a point where, even three months after her disappearance, she was still in the press. Awareness? In Braintree? Why?  It was sad then, and it still is now, but I can’t bring myself to feel any grief for one particular missing child.

I think the time has come now when the whole issue should be (excuse the turn of phrase) put to bed.

Miss Taylor’s words have disturbed me for several reasons: First of all, the fact that she not only feels the need to tell us she couldn’t care less about Madeleine, but seems almost proud of the fact, is disheartening.

She does, though, have a university sanctioned excuse for being bored with the missing four year old – ‘compassion fatigue’ - that’s OK then; as long as there is a name or a syndrome for it, it’s not her fault.

Not content with boasting of her lack of compassion for Madeleine, she highlights how intellectually superior she is in contracting compassion fatigue by patronisingly contrasting her lack of empathy with some ‘bored housewives’ who released balloons in Madeleine’s name.

Bored housewives apparently don’t have the higher mental functions that ‘journalists’ have and so carry on caring when really they should be laid low with the symptoms of Compassion Fatigue. Perhaps they should have been releasing balloons with slogans such as;

Madeleine who?

Who gives a F**K?

‘Time to move on’ 

 ’Tired of Caring’ 

 ’Stop Boring Me’

‘Put it to bed’

 ’Did you see Eastenders last night?’

Have we really reached the point in our evolution where we can be tired of caring for others? Are we in fact devolving? When did it become OK to say I’m too intellectual to care for a missing child and you should be too? In a world where it seems there is an increasing appetite for violence in all its forms within our media how can we celebrate and advocate the decrease of caring and compassion for others?

My six year old niece was called gay at school this week for hugging her friend. A little six year old boy I know was left in tears after being called gay for comforting a boy who was upset.

I had comforted myself with the belief that the school yard bullies were children and would grow out of their ‘caring is gay/bad/evil’ mindsets. But having read Miss Taylor’s  ‘Too Clever To Care’ article I now know that’s tragically not the case.