Saturday, August 14, 2010

Lacking empathy

The most recent blog was about TV in the Netherlands.
How seven channels out of ten were showing almost exclusively American films and series.
Mostly of poor quality.

The blog was not critical about those American products.
It criticized the responsible Dutch persons for the seven TV channels in the Netherlands for thinking only of money.

One sensitive American loyal and fervent blog reader was unable to understand this.
He wrote a comment saying:
“Dude, you need to calm down a bit and focus on the positive. You dwell on mostly negative things in, or about, the USA. Don't be a hater”.


Not only was the man unable to understand what the blog was about, he assessed incorrectly that most of the blogs are about the USA.
Why, we may ask, does this man feel that the USA is attacked?
When it was not.

In his comment he even goes more berserk:

"You take nice snapshots with your cameras, so do that and write about that".


The man is most judgmental and again lacking any expertise.
But he is not without an extreme high dose of arrogance and pretentious paternalism.

Regretfully this man is demonstrating to be unable to have empathy.
He is so deep inside his own American self satisfaction that he is unable to imagine the situations of other people.

As an experiment, imagine you are an American and living in the USA.
You watch TV and you have only ten channels.
But on seven of them are only Chinese films and series.
How would an American feel about that?
Would an American appreciate that?
Would an American not ask why he cannot see American films and series?
Would he not criticize the responsible persons in the USA for putting only Chinese films and series on American TV?
Would he not be outraged?
Hence, why can’t a European not be dissatisfied by a similar situation?

There is another flagrant example.
How would an American feel if his bank accounts in the USA were open for monitoring by the Chinese authorities?
So that the Chinese authorities can see how much money comes in and how it is spend?
An American will scream hell.
Based on liberty and privacy no American would tolerate this kind of spying.

But the fact is that the USA is doing exactly this with the Europeans.
The US Government monitors every bank account of the Europeans.

What must a European feel about this?
Will the European not think in the same way about this like an American who realizes his bank account is monitored by the Chinese Government?
Therefore, why is a European not allowed by a fervent and loyal American blog reader to be upset?
An American with a minimum of empathy would understand it very well.




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2 comments:

Wendy said...

For Dutch qaulity TV watch 'Zomergasten' Sunday August 15th. Nederland 2. F
ocus on the good stuff and ignore the commercial crap...
And as Doe Maar said years ago:
'Hey, er zit een knop op die TV.'

raj said...

tv is for morons anyway; why even worry about it?? watch the science, travel and nature channels and screw the rest!!!