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10 replies

lemmy.world

Poverty tourism is a fascinating industry.

It really can teach empathy to young people, but it's also an extremely inefficient use of resources. People will spend 3 grand to travel across the world to provide aid worth about a hundred bucks.

30

There's a whole lot of empathy that could be learned in the US too, we aren't as open to converting though.

12
bleistift2reply
sopuli.xyz

From what I’ve heard that empathy lasts about a week before the day-to-day in your home country lets you forget the third world.

12
FerretyFever0reply
fedia.io

Oh, absolutely. I doubt any of them really keep contact with the people they "helped".

6
chiliedoggreply
lemmy.world

They don't keep in contact with the people, but it can help them empathize with people they don't know and change their outlook on "foreigners."

5
FerretyFever0reply
fedia.io

I mean, I guess. But it's pretty easy to forget about other people when you aren't really reminded of them, especially when you never really knew them that well.

2

I can't speak for everyone, but when I went to Bolivia with a medical team in 2000 as a high-schooler my life was changed. I don't keep in contact with anyone from those days, but the experience made me a better, more empathetic person, and I better recognize my privilege as an American.

Am I perfect? No. But it still gave me a different perspective on the world than my experiences in the marching band as a middle-class white Texan kid. I went into it brainwashed as a hard-core Republican. That didn't change in my few weeks in Bolivia, but the impressions it left on me were a large part of how I came to re-evaluate my social, spiritual, and political beliefs in college.

4

β€œThe foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” 

Leviticus 19:34

If only they actually took the bible seriously.

11

No god please don't try to get then to spread their religion. It always ends in genocide. :(

4

Frederick Douglass called it American Christianity.

He was soo fucking right.

4

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