it sickens me how little people care about other countries' issues these days.
today there were 7 bomb blasts in local trains and 2 train stations in Mumbai, India. Over 450 were injured and over 150 were killed.
did you know?
did you care?
Anonymous
06:09:51 PM
16 comments:
Every year people die in car accidents.
Every year babies die because parents leave them in a car without thinking that it could get to hot.
People slip and fall downstairs, get eaten by pigs, eat poisoness mushrooms, and get shot in robberies.
Every year a few americans die because they travel to England and look the wrong way before walking into the street.
Did you know which of those happened today, to whom, where, and when? No you didn't. Do you care? Well you didn't because you didn't know about it.
Shit happens and people die, it's just a fact of life. I know India doesn't have quite the "quality of life" that we have here in America and yes it would be possible for us to help them in some manner (which we do to a great deal), but there is no way for us to help every poor soul on this planet.
Hell, there isn't even a way for us to know about half the poor souls on this planet.
I'm sorry that those people died, but on a truly global scale they are insignificant, and in all likelihood they would never make a difference. That may sound horrible and I know they had families and feelings and blah blah blah but when talking about something global like those less than 1000 people in India you have to talk on a global scale.
If I knew those families or someone connected to them, I would probably feel sad and try to help those people in some way, but I have to be accountable for myself and those around me and certainly not some random less than 1000 people I've never heard of in India.
It's no laughing matter, but it's nothing out of the ordinary.
codeword:
PCHIS DOESN'T!!!
OP, I must say, pchis has some very good points.
People die every day; more than 150 people, in fact. Many of them violently, in wars, genocides, and other attacks both personal and indiscriminant. Do you mourn them?
Regardless, the loss of life is tragic, and must have a large effect on the Mumbai community, economically, personally, and psychologically.
At any rate, the explosions are reported to have occured around 9 o'clock this morning, Eastern time. When you posted at just after 6pm this evening, hardly nine hours had passed before you opened with your accusatory tone. I think it's a tad unreasonable to expect the masses to have already read up on the situation (more than a quick blurb on TV), done research, and begun a period of dedicated sympathy for this lone situation.
i agree with pchis. Its kind of depressing but the world is big. More people die of disease, starvation and simply “old age” every day than that and no one cares the only reason that you even care about the people on that train is because it was different from the average.
Just because someone gets blown to bits that doesn’t make their death any different than the people who die from non spectacular ways. Do you care about any of those people. The massive tsunami made media coverage because it was something completely un expected and pretty damn spectacular. Still that many people die every day from ordinary causes but do they receive media coverage and do you care?
no i dont care neither does most of the world.
Christ, whatever happened to empathy? Yeah I knew about it. Yeah I cared. I didn't go into throes of anguish, but I didn't belittle the loss of life that occured. They're still people.
Who remembers when like, 7 astronauts died in some spacehsip explosion? It was a HUGE deal. I had a hard time understanding why their deaths were considered so much more significant than the thousands of people who die from malnutrition or war every day.
i knew. i watched cnn. yay me.
"People die every day; more than 150 people, in fact. Many of them violently, in wars, genocides, and other attacks both personal and indiscriminant. Do you mourn them?"
Yeah, actually, I do.
And i recognize that people are dying every day in non-spectacular way, but there are millions more who are dying for reasons that can be stopped... like genocide, disease (AIDS), poverty, and in this case... terrorism.
It makes me sick how people can say that just because it had nothign to do with them personally that they shouldn't have to care. I know that nine hours had passed since i posted, but you know what i was doing? I was calling and seeing if my family was okay. so don't get up in my face about that.
I recognize that the people who come to Tangst are more likely to be aware of what's going on in the world. But what about the millions of people in America who had absolutely no idea?
Happy News
Seriously. I knew it happened. And it's terrible. But if all we did was watch CNN all day and listen to all of the terrible things that happen in our world, we would probably all get so depressed that we would commit suicide. And then the decomposition of all of our bodies would release tons of carbon dioxide into the air, resulting in additional global warming, and kill every living thing on this planet. You wouldn't want that, would you?
I'm sorry for the personal connection you have to the attacks, that makes sense with relation to your incredible concern for this situation.
No matter how sad it may seem, though, you really must understand that it is not for lack of concern that many people feel small remorse for victims of violence, but for lack of relevance, personal connection, and media attention.
People who live in communities where their media sources do not feel a certain incident merits wide publicity will condense a report to a quick sound bite, leaving viewers with nothing more than a pang of remorse and a fleeting memory of the occurrence.
People without relative, friends, or other similarly personal connections to a given event will likewise have little incentive, if you will, to recognize and revere a tragedy, no matter its degree prevalence in the worldview of their peers.
Relevance and perspective are crucial to interpretation and remembrance of nearly every event that occurs in today's modern world. Without relevance, a death is simply a statistic, a sterile report. Without personal importance, violence is simply a culturally accepted "bad thing." Without well-developed media coverage and publicity, the multitudes of small incidents affecting humanity are relatively meaningless in the scope of the human race.
People only have empathy if they can relate to a situation. People only have sympathy if they can reflect upon a similar occurrence in their lives. People have apathy when an event is neither relevant nor prevalently important in their lives.
As both the OP and Queen Sekaf have pointed out, importance and prevalence of an event in the global arena can be vastly manipulated by the organizations that control the dissemination across technological mediums. Queen Sekaf's example of the space shuttle disaster may be easily contrasted with African genocides: seven widely respected American astronauts perished in a massively witnessed event, showcasing faults in America's space program; hundreds of thousands of people are killed and maimed in civil wars and related strife in a region exploited by industrialized nations and cut off from foreign aid or intervention. In these two cases, perspective is everything; with no media attention and little relevant ties to the American populace, victims of African warfare go largely unnoticed, though within their communities the violence is a very real, very deadly tragedy.
Even you must admit it yourself; you say that you are aware and concerned with the plight of the millions who perish in global violence, but in reality this is impossible. Unless you are a terribly pitiable recluse, I doubt that you spend your time watching television and reading internet reports of war crimes in Africa, murders in the United States, bombings in the Middle East, rapes in South America, and difficulties surrounding citizens living under the oppressive North Korean regime.
That's not to say that you don't make yourself generally aware of the problems, but you are lying to yourself and to all who read this topic if you insist that every death, every circumstance, every horrible act of violence, committed across the world every minute of every hour of every day, affects you deeply and sincerely.
It may sound cold, it may sound insensitive, but that's how this world goes.
You are concerned. Your friends and relatives are affected. You can relate directly to the violence in this case. This affects you personally, creating a poignant memory. I empathize with you.
~200 people is incredily smallin the scheme of things. They were going to die any ways there no way to completely delay death and if all of the peopl on thoses trains ahad died of heart attacks then you would not notice. The only thing i find disturbing is that this violencce exist not the 200 or so people killed by it this time.
龙年 has had two excellent commentaries here.
I resent the OP's generalization that everyone should care. OP, are you working to ensure a recount in the historically close Mexican election? Are you on the Israeli/Lebanese border where several have died from both sides today? Were you in South Korea last week when the nation held its breath when North Korea tested missiles? Why weren't you there? Where was your voice? Are you a member of Amnesty International? Are you writing your senator or congressional representative?
Before you accuse us of indifference, please stop making yourself indifferent to the world's problems.
lebanese hahahahahahaha
"Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is."
--Yoda
Let's all start working for a better world instead of bitching at each other about who should or shouldn't be caring more or less and pointing fingers.
:D
"Come on people now, smile on your brother
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now"
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