In the grand theatre of human concern, a spotlight illuminates the stage. It is a brilliant, searing beam of collective empathy, fixed for a moment on a particular tragedy, a specific group of people, a designated injustice. We watch, we mourn, we donate, we hashtag. We feel, or at least perform, the depths of our compassion. But while this light burns bright, vast swathes of the worldwide auditorium remain cloaked in shadow. In the darkness, other victims bleed, other stories go untold, other grief is rendered invisible. This is the worrying phenomenon of the ‘acceptable victim’—the subtle, often unconscious, process by which society anoints some suffering as worthy of our tears, while dismissing the rest as mere background noise.
The criteria for this tragic selection are as varied as they are arbitrary, hinging on the shifting sands of race, religion, gender, geography, and political utility. A bomb blast in a familiar Western city becomes a global trauma, its victims rendered instantly relatable through endless media coverage. A decade of brutal civil war in a distant nation, however, is reduced to a footnote, its victims aggregated into an impersonal statistic. The suffering of a group who align with a prevailing political narrative is amplified; the identical suffering of a group who do not is muffled or ignored.
The mechanisms are insidious because they rarely feel like malice. They are woven into the fabric of our media, our politics, and our conversations. A news report will describe a victim as a “brave humanitarian” or an “innocent schoolchild,” language that summons our protective instincts. Another victim, in a different context, is labelled an “agitator,” “in opposition,” or merely a “casualty of conflict,” words that create distance, that allow us to look away. Our empathy, it turns out, is not an open floodgate but a series of locks and dams, opened and closed by narratives crafted by governments, media outlets, and even our own social circles.
What is most dangerous about this hierarchy of pain is its fluidity. The cast of ‘acceptable victims’ is perennially in flux. History provides a stark and humbling lesson in how easily roles can be switched.
Consider the Irish, who for centuries in Britain and America were a racialised and despised underclass, their victims of famine and discrimination largely ignored by the establishment. Today, they are largely absorbed into the broad category of “white,” and their historical suffering is often minimised or forgotten in contemporary discussions of privilege. The spotlight has moved on. Conversely, the white, working-class male, once the archetypal hero of the nation—the soldier, the miner, the builder—now finds his own specific struggles with economic decline, addiction, and social alienation frequently dismissed or even mocked in a discourse that often reifies him as the universal oppressor. His suffering is no longer fashionable.
Geopolitics provides the most cynical display of this reversal. In the 1980s, the Afghan mujahideen were lauded in the West as “freedom fighters,” their victims of Soviet aggression worthy of our unwavering support. Years later, as the political winds shifted, the suffering of Afghans under the Taliban became a secondary concern, a complex problem best left in the shadows. The Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar were a forgotten crisis for years, their persecution escalating unnoticed until a sudden, brutal surge of violence finally, temporarily, captured the world’s attention. The victims were the same; the world’s readiness to see them had changed.
This phenomenon is not merely an academic observation; it corrodes the very foundation of our shared humanity. When entire communities perceive that their pain is categorised as unacceptable, it breeds a deep and corrosive resentment. It fuels the narrative that they are forgotten, that the system is rigged against them. This creates a fertile ground for cynicism and division, making people susceptible to demagogues who promise to finally turn the spotlight their way. It fractures society, turning potential allies into competitors in a grim contest for moral validation.
To ignore this is to endorse a world where justice is a commodity, allocated based on popularity, political expediency, and the whims of the news cycle. It creates a moral myopia where we become experts at the suffering we are told to see and blind to the suffering we are not. The ultimate tragedy is not just that the unacceptable victim is unseen, but that in our selective compassion, we diminish the very meaning of the word ‘victim’. We silently agree that some lives are inherently more valuable than others.
To break this cycle requires more than passive sympathy; it demands a conscious, difficult, and often uncomfortable act of introspection. It requires us to ask ourselves whose pain we habitually ignore, and why. It means challenging the narratives handed to us and actively seeking out the stories languishing in the dark. True compassion is not a spotlight we move from one stage to the next, rewarding some while punishing others with obscurity. It is the hard, unending work of striving to turn on the lights in every darkened room, to acknowledge the unseen wound, and to recognise that a plea for help, whispered from any corner of the world, deserves to be heard.
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 