There was a time when pain demanded a reaction—when injustice burned in the chest, when sorrow welled up in the eyes, when rage found its voice.
But this generation? We have mastered the art of feeling nothing.
We see suffering, and we keep scrolling. A tragedy unfolds before us, and we reduce it to just a fleeting reaction—an emoji, a repost, a momentary sigh before moving on.
We are spectators in a world on fire, numbed by the sheer repetition of disaster and destruction. The more we witness, the less we feel.
Pain is not absent; it is ignored. Grief is not unfelt; it is buried under distractions. Conscience is not dead; it is sedated.
And perhaps that is the greatest tragedy—not that we do not care, but that we have trained ourselves to pretend we don’t.
Sensitivity is mocked. Outrage is dismissed. Empathy is labeled as weakness.
But tell me, what is strength if it comes at the cost of feeling nothing? What is survival if we have lost the very thing that makes us human?
We were not meant to be unbothered. We were not created to be indifferent. And yet, here we are—a generation that feels nothing, in a world that desperately needs us to feel everything.
The greatest tragedy is having a heart that doesn’t feel, eyes that don’t see, and a brain that doesn’t process.
To exist without empathy, to witness without understanding, to think without questioning—is to be alive in body but dead in spirit.
— Sadia Hakim // Letters Unsent
They say we feel nothing, but maybe it’s just easier to be numb than to witness the collapse. The cracks were there long before us — A Civilization Crumbling Without a Cry is proof of that.