Oh, they are clever, the people of the world and their ways. Joyful they
seem, their lives so full of friends, so much entertainment, so much fun to
be had in the world. Yet how empty and soulless they are inside.
  Oh, they may say life is wonderful. Oh, they may say that if the homeless
REALLY wanted to, they could get a job of some kind. Oh, they may say that
everything happens for the best and that most of the world is as it should
be. And that most inescapably logical statement: "You're not helping anyone
by feeling sorry for them. All that does it hurt yourself." But what
alternative is there? None, but to deny pity, to block out empathy, to ignore
the miserable wailings of a lost world, in preference of revelling in your
own grease.
  Imagine yourself walking down the street with a friend. The two of you are
laughing, joking, united in a happy friendship of irreverence. Suddenly, you
witness a man run over and killed by a car. Yet your friends continues
telling a funny story, glancing only briefly at the bloody corpse before
walking on, seeming almost to not notice it.
  When you ask your friend if they are sad the man died, they respond "Why?
He's dead. Me being sad won't bring him back. There's no point to it. Just
forget about it."
  I ask you, my reader, would you not have a lower opinion of this friend
afterward? Would they not seem somehow less than human?
  To deny an emotion is to be unfeeling. To selfishly ignore the loss of
others is to be a lower form of life. Inanimate objects do it; When someone
dies, a rock sheds no tears. Nor does a chair, nor a tree, nor a car. Humans
are supposed to be more intelligent than rocks.
  People block out bad things they hear on the news because they're used to
it. But they are less used to seeing these things in person. In the future,
if there is ever global chaos, I can only imagine how insensitive people
might become, deliberately turning their heads away from the sight of someone
being robbed or worse before their very eyes, shrugging, murmuring "There was
nothing I could do" and forgetting about it as they move on.