Must we have an extreme environment or problem to get an extreme reaction or love for people?  With this asked, what is the extent of what we could do if we can get these extreme reactions with out the extreme environments?

Tough questions... I'm a little foggy with all the cold medicines I'm on, but I'll try to make my thoughts coherent... To answer your second question, the possibilities would be limitless. The number of ordinary environments encompassing our daily lives greatly outnumber the extreme... if we could use ordinary settings to generate the maximum effect, we'd be successfully utilizing the majority of our lives and there would be no limit to what we could do. We could use the most mundane moments of our lives to create tidal waves of love and passion for humanity, and we could accomplish so much through that. What we should seriously consider here is the effect of desensitization. People constantly hear about extremely bad crises in the media, word of mouth, what have you. Terrorist attacks, natural disasters, genocides... it's all there, and we hear about it day to day. The thousands of people dying don't seem like people anymore; they become numbers. Statistics. No souls, no hearts, no minds - just numbers. We hear about the extremes, and eventually they become the norm. Nothing appalls us anymore. The crises have to become more shocking, more bloody, more inhumane, in order to stir any sense of injustice in us; thus, the need for extreme environments in order to get the extreme reactions, which is what you are addressing. With desensitization in mind, I think it's imperative that we work on changing the attitude and heart of society. If we can somehow make people appreciate every quirk, every thought, every laugh line on the face of another, then we won't need extreme environments to make people feel compassion. They will see each human being as a wonderfully intricate, one-of-a-kind piece of pure art. They'll know compassion already, because they'll value each individual life with fervor. My question (and it's basically a layman's paraphrase of what you're asking) is: How do we break past the desensitization to make people see the value of human life on a moment by moment basis, eliminating the need for an extreme environment to generate extreme love and compassion?

Sorry that was so long. And I was kind of talking in circles. I'm not even sure if I answered your question, haha.