Doctors are no more nor less immune to this, and to the basic human drives of empathy and pity, than anyone else.
CITIZEN RUTH Alexander Payne's 1996 satire, about a pregnant derelict caught between factions in the abortion wars, is anything but jaundiced: poking both where it tickles and where it hurts, Payne evokes empathy without pity and tenderness without sentiment.
"Art reflects with great empathy the pity of the situation, the fact of war," says Keenlyside. "Whenever I'm involved in Britten's marvellous, majestic War Requiem, or the requiems by Fauré, Duruflé or Verdi, does it make any difference?
Empathy and pity are strong and necessary emotions that deepen our sense of connection to others; but they depend on a kind of metaphorical imagination of what others are going through.
I wanted there to be something too much about the violence in the book, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror.
In "Division by Zero", for example, we feel painful empathy and pity for the main character only because and insofar as we have understood the crisis in her life occasioned by a mathematical paradox.
Politics, at its best and most powerful, is also about empathy and pity, asking us to think about not just what is right for me, but what is right for the community – for the polis.
It means transforming our resentment and self-pity into empathy and compassion.
Their presence in the Games promotes empathy but not pity.
