Photos for thought. ..

In my Critical History of Photography class today, my prof brought up an extremely important subject that I have thought about since noon today.  In a sense, is photography bringing out the passiveness or the lack or remorse in all of us?  She asked this, by asking the class how many photos of starving children in Africa we see each week/month/year.  Then she asked us how many of us look at the photo and actually feel something?  Or, like most, do we keep turning the page or the television channels?  I thought this was extremely interesting because as a photographer myself, I never realized that although it has given us miles of opportunity, like knowing what the Eiffel tower looks like without actually having to visit Paris, but it also engraves a sort of continuous lack of emotion in us all.  In the late 1870's it would have virtually crushed the population to see what is going on in Africa and how the majority of them are living, but today we see this as a societal norm.  I do still believe that wasn't the intent of all of the 'help the children' pictures, and I do believe they were out to do their job, but when you start taking thousands upon thousands of these photos, the public will surely turn a blind eye, like the majority of the western cultures.  It is really too bad that something so honest and beautiful can be swept under our feet so abruptly.