SWA #3: Am I My Brother's Keeper?

Technology and the media inform us about the sufferings of our ‘brothers and sisters’ every single day. Most of the time we either choose to ignore what we see, or we let it make us feel something –sympathy, pity, sorrow, whatever. However, very rarely do we let these sights and destructions actually make a difference in our lives.  We don’t start a charity to raise money for the homeless, and we don’t speak in public to raise awareness for hurricane-struck victims. This is just a generalization, but the majority of the time it is true. We may hear about tragedy in the news on evening, and by the next morning we’ve forgotten all about it as we move along with our days, anticipating the next bit of depressing news we could find out any minute.

Wiesel states that technology lets us know more than ever about or brother and sisters in need throughout the world, but sometimes is can overwhelm us to a point where we become numb to tragedy, family, poverty, terrorist attacks, war, and any other devastation that could possibly happen to us.  He implicates that the media and technology is leading to this, and I couldn’t agree more.  Technology is a fabulous thing, but not in excess. When we’re bombarded with 20 tweets an hour on our phones about the war in Iraq and the devastation of hurricane Irene, we can’t take it in fast enough to care about any, let alone all of it.  ‘How can you care for your brothers and sisters if they’re already beyond repair?’ is what most people think. And it’s perfectly true.  We dismiss more than we should because there’s too much going on in the world for us to care enough about all of it.

According to Wiesel, we can deal with this conundrum by only focusing on small measures one at a time. No one has the power to fix everything in one fell swoop- and that’s how it should be.  As long as we concentrate on one problem at a time, each small act of grace, caring, and kindness can get us where we need to be as a human race- caring for at least one other human being we can consider our brother or sister.  According to Wiesel, we can deal with this conundrum by only focusing on small measures one at a time. No one has the power to fix everything in one fell swoop- and that’s how it should be.  As long as we concentrate on one problem at a time, each small act of grace, caring, and kindness can get us where we need to be as a human race- caring for at least one other human being we can consider our brother or sister.