Compassion dwindling for those in need

Utahns have always taken great pride in being people with strong values — compassion, caring for the less fortunate, family, community and the respect and dignity of every individual. But more and more, we are beginning to lose the moral high ground by the numbing of those values and our failure to act.

Last week, a person reported falling and not being able to get up during morning rush hour trying to catch TRAX. Several drivers honked before a Good Samaritan got out to help. Seems we have become a society that has lost compassion for those in need. Rather than lending a helping hand, we have mastered the art of "victim blaming."

The recent death of Dana Reeve, a nonsmoking victim of lung cancer, brought out the point that less attention is given to lung cancer, as opposed to breast and prostate cancer, because there is a tendency to blame lung cancer victims for their plight. In addition, because they have a short survival rate, few live to advocate for their cause. The same holds true for the poor — children, elderly and those with disabilities. They, too, are blamed for their poverty and now find few, if any, to speak in their behalf. Poverty is that state where an individual has to negotiate with agencies for those things you and I take for granted. And that may be the worst part of having to ask for public assistance. While it may minister to the needs of the body, it extracts that which feeds the soul — dignity.

Today, there is a generation that seems to show little compassion or respect for those less fortunate. They all too glibly say the poor are where they are in life by "the bad choices they have made and now they have to assume personal responsibility." Unfortunately, such perceptions seem to seep more and more in to the fiber of the American ethos. Much is due because we have become a two-tiered-society of the haves and have-nots. We live in a highly mobile and impersonal society today where we don't even know our neighbors, let alone someone from a different socioeconomic class.