This phenomenon occurs also with literary critics in relation to readers, and psychoanalysts with patients. Why heroic medicine, though costlier and less efficient, is more attractive than preventive medicine. Accidents continue to exact a greater toll than most diseases, but many people do not believe in accidents. Totemism has contemporary forms, from football to Woodstock and Wagner to any sectarianism that supports identity in a global melting pot. Why our domestic poor are hard to embrace.
Many policy makers see compassion as a liability.
Those who embrace the weak yield to an ethical pull that closes the gap between strata, reminding us of fallibility and mortality. Why we wake ourselves up with nightmares. To reassure ourselves that we have not died. Reports of unexpected death to strangers comfort us, paradoxically. By definition, the audience is comprised of those who have survived.