2007 — Seventh Grade Fifth Place

Nicky Loverso, Minnesota.

Compassion or Violence:

Which has a greater impact on society?

Violence or compassion? Both affect our society in many ways. Compassion helps those who are in difficult situations to feel less isolated and to feel hope that their situation might improve; violence hurts and sometimes completely destroys the lives of so many people everyday. But which has more of an impact? I think that violence does.

            Violence is a force that is intended to damage or abuse something or someone. I think that is had a huge impact on our society. Violence has destroyed entire communities in just a few seconds, and made the lives of people in whole countries unbearable. Wars are violent acts that can result in change, and if there had been no Revolutionary War, what would American be like? Would it still belong to England? Whether it would or not, it definitely wouldn't be the same as the country we know today. And there have been many, many wars besides the Revolutionary War, such as the Vietnam War, and the war in Iraq that's still going on today. Those wars have had huge impacts on the world, and our whole history would be completely different if they hadn't happened.

            No matter how much compassion is shown to those who have suffered because of violence, it still doesn't repair the physical damage that was done. If a bomb destroys someone's home and the people around them come to give support, even though having the people help them may improve the feeling of the person whose home was destroyed, it wouldn’t change the fact that all of their possessions were lost and they no longer have a place to live. I also think that violence has a greater impact on our society because it destroys some people's ability to feel compassion without violence because compassion is the awareness of another's suffering, and the fewer people would be suffering if there were no violence.

            Violence has a greater impact on society than compassion because violence is a force that causes physical and emotional damage and it causes people to do things and feel certain ways. Compassion, although it is incredibly important and our world is a better place because of it, is simply something that is meant to affect people's emotions, and it often doesn’t have a great affect on the way the world is physically.

 

 

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