The other Olympics

I came across this interesting article by Ariel Dorfman, where he raises some concerns about the indifference & cold behavior of humans inhabiting the pitiless earth.

Is this what we ordinary citizens do?
“…..that colder and more perverse and dangerous form of death which settles in the soul when we witness something terrible and cruel and incredibly stupid being perpetrated upon our fellow humans and we prefer to forget those crimes, we prefer to switch the channel or go to sleep or walk the dog.”

“How can we possibly be so obsessed with the drama of who is the fastest man in the world, who can break the record for swimming butterfly style, who can outrace all the other women in the marathon, which team is better at handling a ball in space, how can we be glued to our screens to see these efforts of the body, and we show such scant interest in who is the bravest in confronting iniquity, which woman is the most tenacious in denouncing the causes of pollution, who is the most serene of our contemporaries in proclaiming that we cannot sleep well at night while so many billions are spent on guns and generals and so little is offered for schools and hospitals? “


Does this mean we have a serious shortage of socially responsible citizens?