VR Isn't Necessary for Empathy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNraqiAwTPQ
Disclaimer: I watched the virtual reality videos in regular video format because the VR headsets gave me a headache. But because I experienced it this way, I think that the virtual reality is not the most important part of the experience. When the mother was talking about how their lives used to be normal, she says that she thought of Syria as somewhere where a war like this would never happen. She says that she would hear about bombings and war in other countries and felt pity for them, never thinking that someday other countries would feel pity for her. This reminded me of a video that I found out was produced by the same organization ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihoYKUmJ4aU ), showing a year in the life of a British girl going through a fictional war, forcing people who perhaps wouldn't otherwise see refugees as anything more than statistics as human beings. I think that the transplantation of the war into the western world is unnecessary for making viewers empathize with the victims of these conflicts. All you need is a basic understanding of their experience.

The VR video was effective because it made the viewer empathize with this mother who just wanted the best for her children. We hurt for her because she sees her children sick and can't help them, we relate to her because she's doing her best to have as normal of a life as she possibly can despite her circumstances, getting a job and sending her kids to school. The fancy technology required to make a virtual reality experience possible is a bad allocation of funding that could be better used towards providing aid to these refugees because at the end of the day we don't empathize with people because we see what their street looks like from all possible angles. We empathize with people when we see them as human beings, because we see their pain and hear their stories.