Obviously we can’t count
Swine flu… ooooooo. Total deaths? Well I’ve been looking and so far have found Mexico: 66, America: 5 … and then I stopped looking to be honest. So lets triple those figures and make it: GLOBAL SWINE FLU DEATHS: 213. Hell lets make it 500. Actually lets make it 1000.
What am I getting at? I genuinely believe that us humans are only able to conceptualize (and therefore empathize) with numbers that range under 20. Every single day thousands (probably closer to millions) suffer unbelievably. From rape to starvation to child labour to child abuse to murder to genocide. And the world does nothing.
And yet 5 people die in a freak flood, or 1 child is supported out of cancer, or 2 soldiers are killed – and the world wakes up and cries out in anguish or anger. My favourite comedian Eddie Izzard once said that it is ok for people to kill their own people and the world politely turns aside. But if a people start killing outside of their geographic boundaries or race – well then! That is just not ok and the world will respond with sanctions or war.
Do we box these figures to protect our own ability to cope? Or are our minds just not evolved enough to include such a big sphere into our personal environment? Does mob consciousness take over whereby the victims become one big nameless and faceless statistic that we cannot identify with?
I don’t know. But perhaps if we started lifting our eyes from the ground to really look at each face that resides behind the statistics our world would improve just a fraction more (by no more than 20 decimal points of course)
