I disagree with O’Brien’s thesis because I believe we are just as empathetic as we were 20 years ago. Tragedies are happening so often that they are becoming a part of everyday life. News is all about shock value today and the best shock value is bad news. With the constant stream of news in our everyday lives, it is becoming harder to focus on a specific event without another being shared with us immediately afterwards. As O’Brien stated, “the tragedies all run together, making it harder to care in any sort of sustained way” (O’Brien 4). I do not believe we are becoming less empathetic, but rather there is so much tragedy going on in the word that it is hard to show a high level of empathy towards everything. With all the events going on around
