Wolf-AUS said:
Eico said:
My grandmother was diagnosed and died of breast cancer not more than a month ago. I had a friend commit suicide a few months ago as a result of years of bullying. A husband and wife couple I grew up with both died of AIDS. It happens. Life goes on. Your presumptions do you no credit.
Not the same familiarity with death I'm talking about. But I'm not here to get into a pissing contest. Granted everyone dies, but people who meet their end through particularly traumatic circumstances cannot be brushed off as it simply happens, it's not the same as someone who passes due to old age. The Kiwis still trapped under rubble are facing particularly trying times ahead of them until they get rescued, some won't be rescued and will die trapped under the buildings, a bit of empathy for them and their families is warranted. Being so callous and showing such little value in human life does these people no justice.
Justice doesn't exist, my friend. Not in this world. What of the people starving, overdosing, having heart attacks, dying of disease and infection? More than one hundred and fifty thousand people die every day. Do none of these people deserve forum posts? What of the homeless who literally die in the gutter every day? Is it because they are easier to ignore? That sounds far more callous than I. Why grant to some such respect, when to others, who die a grievous death on a daily basis, receive none? I don't see any forum posts about them. Is it because it happens so often it's become background noise? Is it as easy for you to ignore them as it is for me to shrug off the deaths of 0.0014% of a wealthy, first world, developed and thriving country's population? Is it because the news is shoving this down your throat and you've yet to hear of the others? Is it okay to ignore some, simply because no one talks about them? Is empathy due only when the majority decide it is? Picking and choosing who to give your condolences is queer to me; I'd have thought all human life equal. If one was to mourn the loss of so few, why not the others, numbering so many more?
Maybe, just maybe, if one was to pause and consider just the children who are dying this very second, not even the elderly or adult, numbering many, many times more than the Kiwis trapped under their workplace roof, one would receive some perspective. Is this earthquake a good thing? No. Are there an order of magnitude worse situations going on this very second I type this and you read it? Yes. Have you any idea the number of civilian casualties since America began the occupation of Iraq? More than 100,000. And those are people dying in the collapsed reminisce of their home, in the car that was set alight, in fire fights between the waring factions. And that's going on right now. Every day. For years. More than a thousand times greater is that death toll than this. You'll forgive me if, by comparison, my priorities are elsewhere.
