EDD - hidden in plain sight

Michael, perhaps you're fortunate enough never to have needed the social and welfare services of your local authority, or stood in line at an unemployment centre, or needed the police as a victim of crime, or been hospitalised in a public facility, or become disabled, or homeless (just think 'Katrina' for example), or any number of situations where the massive legions of public 'service' providers and bureaucrats hold power over your life and, but for the grace of God, have themselves narrowly escaped any or all of those misfortunes.

Routinely, people who have encountered any of these situations find that they can easily become a specimen, a hapless sub-human to whom anything can be done, upon whom any amount of casual, callous abuse can be heaped.

Such unfortunate people soon find that there certainly is a massive deficit in empathy amongst the general populace. In fact, it's so pervasive and epidemic that most of us do not even notice it now. (And let's not even get started on the millions of children who die or are maimed each week as a result of famine, war, poverty. All the endless atrocities of endless wars and conflicts. Etc.etc. While the rest of us turn a convenient blind eye.)

No, I am sure that Empathy Deficit Disorder is real and at devastating levels. May I, with great respect, suggest that you might revisit what 'empathy' really means and perhaps also spend a week at a public employment bureau, or a police station, or a state facility for those with learning difficulties or paraplegia, or at public hospital - the possibilities are almost endless. Tell the staff that you're doing research into 'how badly behaved service users are, how they are ingrates and abusive, how demanding they are'. That'll immediately yield a tremendous welter of staff tales of their routinely callous and punitive treatment of service users - and usually delivered with a smirking sneer - before you even begin your observations.

As a regular reader of your blog, and others here, I genuinely look forward to your report back.