Kate

“What news do political junkies demand? Outrage and gossip. Why? Because it’s alluring. What news do we avoid? Local news. Why? It’s boring. What do we think of our partisan opponents? We hate them. Do we really hate them? No, but politics is more fun if we root for a team and spew anger at the other side. It’s easier to hate and dismiss the other side than to empathize and connect to them. When do we vote? When there’s a spectacle. When do we click? When politics can be a frivolous distraction. When do we donate? When there’ a cocktail party or a viral video. What are we doing? We’re taking actions not to empower our political values, but to satisfy our passion for the sport of politics.”
― Eitan Hersh

“Presently I met a woman I knew who was wearing a bright new khaki uniform, loaded down with all the leather and metal gadgets it would hold. She was sailing for London, she said, to supervise the work of feeding school-lunches to undernourished children in the London schools. Wasn't it horrible, she said, that on account of the war 12 percent of them were undernourished? 'That is horrible,' I said, 'but what would you say if I told you t hat, in New York, 21 percent of the school children are undernourished, and largely on account of that same war?”
― S. Josephine Baker, Fighting for Life

“This scholarly shortfall did not happen by chance. Part of it has to do with particular discomforts characteristics of left-leaning academic social scientists. Conducting high-quality ethnographic or long-term participant observation research can require a great deal of empathy for one’s subjects. Such research involves more or less taking on the perspective of the people and culture being studied. It means listening to their stories with honesty and, if only for a moment, giving their experiences and their explanations the benefit of the doubt. But most social scientists know the facts about inequality, wealth, and privilege, and thus find the empathy required for ethnographic research in short supply when it comes to the ultra-wealthy. Empathy is more naturally given to the people and communities obviously suffering harm, rather than, say, a Wall Street financier who struggles with the life complexities and social-psychological dilemmas that accompany immense wealth and power.”
― Justin Farrell, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West

“The easy consolation of placing the blame at one definite door was denied me. I did not vision that this, too, would be my fate concerning everything throughout the years to come: forever mixed feelings, an ever-increasing complexity of problems, repellent dirt, gripping misery, appalling selfishness and exploitation side by side with sublime self-abnegation, marvelous beauty of color and form – and never the chance of fixing the blame and earning placid rest. For with every passing day and month and year I was to see deeper into the causes and to realize that everyone in turn was right, and everyone was wrong.”
― Frieda Hauswirth Das