You are looking at posts that were written on April 27th, 2007.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Mar | May » | |||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | ||||||
American Dream Project on Moral Imagination
This week American Idol gave back. Nearly 30 million American’s watched stories of poverty and disease and heard a plea for help. Yes, there were the stories of unbelievable suffering in Africa, but did you see the incredible poverty and pain related through stories of crime ridden “trailer ghettos” filled with Hurricane Katrina victims, illiterate mothers and obese children in Kentucky, and a single mom working three jobs in Los Angeles only to have her 8-year old weep from the stress of getting the bills paid?
What I’ve learned from talking to thousands of Americans is that what goes through viewers? minds when seeing these stories varies from compassion to blame. It seems most of us think this way: if something bad is happening to a family member, a friend, or us it is a crisis. If it is happening to some one like us, it’s a problem. If it’s happening to someone we view as unlike us, it’s his or her fault. Deal with it.
After Katrina, I was blogging about the sorry state of leadership when lots of angry people replied that most of the victims were lazy, no damn-good whiners who should know how to take care of themselves. This was not the view of a few. Is this what our culture has become?
In our personal quest for more and the competitive energy of our economy, have we lost our moral imagination? We don’t have to.
Read More: American Dream Project on Moral Imagination