Compassion fatigue is kiling off our fellow creatures.
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Anson Cameron
I notice I have begun to avoid elephants. And rhinos. And polar bears – though I love those pale nomads best. Any time a wildlife show comes on with a pachyderm and a wobbly calf at foot I switch channels. I know what’s in store for that little fellow. And a white bear staring in bewilderment out to sea waiting for pack ice to form has me scrambling for the remote. What else is on TV? NCIS Anywhere will do. Something light. Maybe a movie about a class reunion where one guy has become a CIA assassin since leaving school.
Even Attenborough has become a sort of hospital for the incurables, too sad to visit. (I knew a man who spent five years in The Hospital For Incurables in Heidelberg, before getting out, marrying, having a family, and a lauded 60-year medical career. They changed the name of the hospital to The Austin). I’m on tenterhooks watching Attenborough these days. “High above me is a slumbering orangutan” I wonder is David whispering so he doesn’t wake the ape, or the loggers at their siesta nearby?
Like a citizen of that infamous Reich, I am developing a gift for turning away and pretending not to know. Why should I, out of some sense of moral duty, be made to watch the last unicorn have its horn hacked off as an aphrodisiac? How am I advantaged by knowing the forests of Siberia are now booby-trapped and that the last tigers are being gunned down remotely?
I have compassion fatigue for the planet. It’s cowardly, and treacherous, this impulse to turn away from the beloved, doomed species and places. But I’ve noticed I’m far from alone. A lot of people are looking away. “I can’t watch nature docos any more. It’s all too sad.” How many times have you heard that? Surrendering to the inevitable is prudent. But surrendering to the inevitable is sometimes what makes it inevitable.
It’s not just sadness at the incessant shrinkage and massacres – it’s guilt as well. Who wants to rehash the marriage that failed because of their own bastardry? Who wants reminding of their conviction for fraud? Rather look away.
I realised, when I started to avoid the elephant, that it would become extinct culturally before it actually went under in the wild. And that hearing of the death of the last elephant will be like hearing of the death of Keith Richards. Firstly, surprise he was still alive at all. Then a sort of fatalism. “Well, Jumbo, old boy, you had some pretty dubious habits, what with ranging the veldt and being large. No one expected you to last this long doing that shit.” We’ll be inured to the death of each species by the time its extinction occurs.
A recent University of New South Wales study found a 70 per cent decrease in water birds in the Murray-Darling basin in the last 30 years. An apocalypse slotted neatly between Richmond premierships. Again, I feel the same impulse to look away as I would seeing a truck bearing down on a toddler. Seventy per cent. Not a fact you can un-know – but neither should I be forced to bear witness. Should I? What is my responsibility here?
Maybe IT geeks will build a virtual ark. Maybe the natural world can be recreated as a computer simulation where the defeated species of our planet live in a binary environment, not summoned forth two-by-two as was Noah’s method, but with ones and zeros supplied by lab-nerds. But then … maybe not. Why would we bother simulating a world we let die in the first place?
Nature was once red in tooth and claw; dark forests amok with wolves and briny deeps bristling with sinister leviathan. We were her victims then. Until there was a brief parity of about 200 years in which we romanticised her, looked upon her as a great green God-given cathedral. (Even as we hacked away at her). Now she has become our victim. The oceans are brothy warm and croutonned with plastics. The forests piecemeal, vestigial, slashed with boardwalks. Globetrotters drag contrails across de-hawked skies.
But … recently a pallid cuckoo flew into my window. I heard the bang and found it on the porch sofa. It had one eye bulging and its head lolled. I brought it water but it didn’t drink. A goner. I went inside. It sat semi-conscious and palpitating for five hours. A goner. Until at sundown my daughter saw it fly away.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on The Extinction Chronicles.
Excellent writing. Cuts deep and so right. Glad the bird recovered to fly away.
Reblogged this on Upper Dublin Deer and commented:
Will they make it and will we?
I feel the same about the TV channels showing these amazing animals, I just cringe knowing the truth of the imminent demise ..what a disgraceful bunch we are and miserable stewards of the planet…I don’t care if we make it we don’t deserve even the air or water ..the animals are innocent of any issues, we are the nemesis! All that roam the earth it is their home too….they deserve better then we have done, we have not shared properly and those that don’t share need to go to the corner and figure out why we don’t ….. I figure it is speciesism and Speciesism kills and we suck because we are so greedy and ignorant of our own billions of footprints.
What we fail to grasp is that everything that lives on this planet is part of the complex system that supports life. Remove one species, others will die off. Keep removing more and we will die off too. The human species is totally ignorant about life and living systems.
Speak for yourself, John. I don’t turn away.
Funny, I have just the opposite approach. Increasingly, I have humanity fatigue. I turn away from just about all of it.
I totally get it. My impotent rage against humanity increases daily. There is nothing I feel I can do.
I consistently wish the worst for our species; the sooner the better. It’s all just wishful thinking; most species are on the brink and humans still thrive, endlessly breeding and greeding.
I know – that’s all you can call it, impotent rage. There’s really not much you can do about humanity’s bad and selfish behavior, it’s in our DNA I believe. Especially with all the stupid stuff we hear about in the news daily. I’m really getting fatigue with that.
But, I try not to let it get me down and I will never look away from our bad deeds when it comes to other creatures on the planet. I thought this article was on the irresponsible side, and the ‘pallid’ cuckoo part disingenuous. All right, fake.
Amen!
This is spot-on and I’ve often thought that the plight of our Earth (and the precious animals who depend upon Her) at this moment in time is similar to the trajectory of WWII where too many good & caring people hid their heads in the sand.
However, I do wish this author had challenged himself to break free from inertia and compassion fatigue by attempting to aid the window-struck cuckoo in the end–more than just offer water. Injured wild animals can often be saved via reputable rehabbers, etc.
We may not be able to change the tide of humanity’s greed and arrogance at this point, but we can each do our part to ease suffering–just like the countless brave Germans who defied Hitler and hid the persecuted in their attics and cellars. Even in the midst of madness, we can do simple acts of good and change the world entire.
An essay that accurately reflects my same feelings about nature documentaries on TV today. But let’s consider further those “decent” citizens of the Reich who turned a blind eye to what was going on in their time. Who do we praise and admire today: those who recognized evil but cowardly looked the other way or the handful of brave souls who took direct action, often costing them their own lives, to rescue and hide victims, to blow-up rail lines, sabotage war industries, assassinate Nazi functionaries, and stand up against the whole rotten enterprise that was the Third Reich. What will posterity say about those of us who hold back today, deploy democracy and “majority-rule” as an excuse, defer to “legal” authority and “societal” standards, and ultimately give in to impotent hand-wringing? “The brave taste of death but once while cowards die a thousand times.”
That’s what bugs me about this article – it’s too fatalistic or defeatist. The tone is too accepting, and that the author has given up. I don’t know why he chose to call the cuckoo ‘pallid’. It seems a strange choice of words. The birds and other wildlife are still trying to survive in spite of us.
Many have not and will not look the other way – and will go down fighting (if we go at all). So it’s almost irresponsible in that way.
This is really a great article and one I can identify with, as I’m sure most animal activists can. I suspect compassion fatigue can start sooner now than in the past. It was bad enough to read about the horrific abuse that, for example, farm animals undergo. But seeing and hearing examples on video magnifies the impact. Then, there is the sheer amount of abuse and killing we discover when notices comes in from around the world of traditions and cruelties not seen in this country.
The problem is how to deal with compassion fatigue. Turning the channel or clicking on another website may be tempting, but it does not help animals. And they are the important factor here, not our own discomfort. At times acting on autopilot may help, that is, trying to dampen our outrage or sadness over an abuse video in order to write the e-mail or sign the petition or whatever we can to help.
Trying to cope with compassion fatigue is important because those who experience it are usually the advocates who truly care and have stayed with the cause long-term. It is unfortunate for the movement to lose them or have them go inactive. I have seen many new recruits attempt vegan diets and throw themselves enthusiastically into being animal rights adherents only to get bored and move on to another issue or current fad. We can ill-afford to lose those who have proven their dedication to the cause.
In Defense of Animals actually has counselors who help people who are experiencing problems dealing with burnout and depression over the animal abuse they fight. I just looked up the contact number: The Support Line is available to all animal advocates via our toll-free number, 1 (800) 705-0425, or by email at activistsupport@idausa.org.
In Defense of Animals also has an on-line group for the above, as well as a vegan spirituality on-line group (which I belong to). Details on their website.
Where can I find details about the on-line group? I looked here, https://www.idausa.org/ but didn’t see anything about the online group. I’m thinking the stress over animal abuse brought on the stroke I had a year and a half ago.
Oh sorry – that’s my bad. The name of the bird wasn’t capitalized, so I misread it.