I have noticed a very natural, univeral phenomenon and you may have noticed it, too. It is how we tend not to care about even the most pressing social issues until they hit home for us, or become real to us through being touched by it in our families, in our lives, or in or through our professions or jobs. Usually, people work with the most passion, tirelessness and vigor for those causes that have touched them in some way. In the area of cancer, cancer survivors, and those who have lost loved ones to cancer, most fervently labor to prevent/end cancer; specifically, they focus on the cancer that has affected them, whether that is breast cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, prostrate cancer, pancreatic cancer, or any other cancer. Singer Sheryl Crow, a breast cancer survivor, advocates strongly for this cancer, and the Susan B. Koman Race For the Cure was born because of a woman whose life was claimed by breast cancer. Montel Williams, the TV talk show host, who has multiple sclerosis (MS), works hard to raise awareness about this condition through his show and in other ways. In the area of crimes against children, John Walsh, Erin Runnion, Donna Norris, Mark Lunsford, Dena Thompson, and others, are strong advocates for children, child safety, and tougher sentences for criminals against children; each one of these people and their families, have tragically lost children to senseless murders. In the area of abortion, it is those who have experienced the trauma and, yes, the guilt feeling of their abortions, as well as those who, abortion survivors like Gianna Jesson and Rebecca Kiessling, conceived of rape, who work tirelessly to end abortion, whether through awareness, education or practical help to families facing crisis pregnancies. Persons like these have seen and dealt with the evils of abortion and want to see its demise, whether from the viewpoint of those who have been traumatized by their own abortions, or who have been conceived in circumstances where our society calls for abortion as a "solution" and they see it most strongly from the unborn's perspective. In the area of disabilities, it is families with loved ones with disabilities, and those with disabilities themselves, who most passionately work hardest for acceptance, opportunties and awareness of the needs of the disabled. Get the point? I'm sure you do. We typically do not get fired up about an issue, even an important one, until it gets real to us and touches our own lives.
As a person who often uses social networking to promote my causes as well as support other people's causes, I have noticed this trend over and over. For I have in my network a wide variety of people who use social networks (SN's) for a variety of different causes. First of all, those on my page who are officially tied to organizations, especially Executive Directors, use SN's solely to promote their particular organizations and pretty much ignore any other causes, important as these may be. It is these kind of people who I, generally speaking, have found to be the least supportive of my own causes. These causes/charities range from missing/unidentified charities or causes, domestic violence or child abuse causes, sexual crimes causes or charities, parental alienation causes (patental aleniation is when children are wrongfully taken from their families, usually as a result of a court order, allegedly). Many in my network advocate on behalf of cures, therapies, acceptance, and support for those touched by specific illnesses, disease, medical conditions or disabilities. There seems to be no end to the number of causes and charities.
Whatever we are passionate about and as important as it is, we need to remember that it is, unfortunately, only one of many issues in need of advocacy, awareness, and resources. I see way too many people, caught up seemingly exclusively in the agendas of their causes or their charities, who seem to forget this. We have the right to ask other people to show support for our causes and to encourage us in them, but I don't think we have the right to expect them to be as passionate as we are about things that have touched our lives but which may not have touched theirs. For example, I know that I'm fired up about missing people because of the cases I have followed in the news and the books I have read and the simple fact that I know that having a missing loved one can happen to anyone. But I know that many people are unaware of missing people, have never been touched by this issue and don't think it can happen to them. So they, frankly, don't care. A person in my life has been heard to say, bluntly, "I don't like to see images of missing people. I don't want to know about it." Sadly, I feel that this person is just saying what many people are thinking. Indeed, when I discovered social networking, I did it mainly, at the time, to get the word out about missing people through networking with others; my intense interest in the case of Lindsey Baum, who had been missing for one year at the time (and who is still missing!), is what ushered me into the world of missing people. I started to add as Facebook friends, more and more people of my acquaintance. I would find, to my dismay, that many of these "local friends" would, one by one, remove me as friends and give me no warning. I suspect, and have had others tell me, that these people had removed me because of my missing persons posts that showed up on their home pages. As upsetting as it has been to see so many people come and go as "Facebook friends," I know that much of it is because many of these people, because of life experiences and because they have not been touched by these issues (or were in denial if they were), chose to remove me from their friends list.
On the other hand, I have often wondered, does it require tragedy to make us care and get us fired up? Sadly, it seems to be this way. In my personal life, I know of individuals who have lost children to horrific murders and it was this that got them all fired up about justice, the law, and the safety of children. Before this, I doubt it if these people were as deeply concerned about these issues. The people I know who are most fired up about education and its issues are teachers and those with special needs or with loved ones whom the system has failed; this is because they are directly affected by the system; but we should all be concerned about how children, "our future," are taught and about education. Most uncomfortably, how many of us are fired up about global issues like world poverty or hunger or about the severe global religious persecution of people of faith, or the AIDs pandemic especially on the continent of Africa? These people, real as they are are and suffering (and in many cases, dying!) as they are, seem distant and unreal to us because we are closed off to them and we cannot relate to their experiences. And most of us cannot afford to travel abroad to see, firsthand, the conditions for ourselves, or go on "short-term missions," which many churches, including my own, promote. And, getting closer to home, how many people are fired up about texting and driving, or drinking and driving, until we lose a loved one to one of these? How many of us want to listen to the self-disclosures of people who share about their struggles and the shame and stigmas of things like sexual abuse, mental illnesses, hidden disabilities like autism, epilepsy and others, unless we have been touched by such things or have loved ones who have been touched by them? Do we really need to go through adversity to understand others who go though it? According to the Bible and experience, I think this is usually the case.
In my own life, I have found that yes, it is my experiences that determine what causes I'm most passionate about and which I post about the most on social networks, including this blogspot. I'm fired up about neurological conditions like autism and epilepsy because they have affcted my life. I have grown up with offially diagnosed epilepsy (conpletely controlled for the past 16 years) and undiagnosed autism (high-functioning). And I have a daughter, high-functioning, who is officially diagnosed with autism. Growing up, I have often done to school with or been in other settings with those with a variety of emotional, learning, behavioral and other disabilities, and mental illnesses. Because of all this, disabilities causes are closest to my heart. Growing up, I was officially diagnosed with Marfan's Syndrome, a condition that affects the eyes, the connective joints and the heart's aorta (the heart's largest artery); this and my family history of heart disease, gets me fired up about heart disease and especially about women's heart disease. Also, our family has felt, to some degree, the effects of an economy gone sour, unemployment, and having to use government programs to survive; therefore I'm passionate about poverty, social and economic justice as well as the corporate greed and political corruption as represented by the Occupy movement. Having experienced so much bullying, and often vicious bullying, I'm fired up about bullying and about its causes. And I know that every person has his or her own story which has caused each of you to gravitate toward your causes.
And we cannot assume that just because people are dedicated to a certain cause and are experts at that, that it follows that he or she can automatically relate to and empathize with our situations. For example, I have applied to volunteer at a nonprofit for those facing crisis pregnancies, and I have applied at a nonprofit for abused children and at another for unidentified victims. In each of these cases, I have self-disclosed about my disabilities and hoped that, because these nonprofits presented themselves as caring for people and declared their belief in the priceless value of every human life; I hoped that this would translate to an empathy to the things I disclosed to them. Judging from their reactions to me afterwards, this was not the case! A passion for helping those in crisis pregnancies, abused children, and identifying John or Jane Does does not automatically translate to an understanding of people who differences or empathy for them. It's just like these nonprofits cannot expect people like me to automatically understand them; I have come to do so only through taking the time to educate mysef about them, coupled with knowing that any time ones of thse things could happen within my family or anyone else's.
On a national level, how many of us, in the US or in other parts of the free world, were concerned about terrorism until that fatal, awful day on September 11, 2000? How many of us, on a national level, become stirred up about child sexual abuse until we started to hear one tragic case ofter another, about girls being found not only molested, but dead? It took high-profile cases of children who killed themselves because of their bullying, that got us to care about bullying and to take it seriously. It has taken one child after another, who has lost their lives to child abuse at the hands of parents or other caregivers, that has spawned national concern about this epidemic and has gotten us to talk about it. And so on and on.
Yes, sadly, it seems to often take tragedy, sorrow and trauma to get us to take important issues seriously and to give them the attention that they deserve. If this is the case, then this is a sound argument behind the "Why?" concerning suffering. Think about it.
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