In between studying Daoism and Shintoism (I have a World Religions test on Wednesday) I picked up The Prophetic Imagination again and read a few more pages.
"Empires live by numbness. Empires, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact... Thus compassion that might seem simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the systems, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt." (p. 88-89)
and...
"Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief." (p. 91)
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