Still in great remorse about the VT killings, I can't help but think about the value of a human's life. Whenever this question pops into my head, I think about Stalin's infamous quote (don't hold me to the wording), "One lost life is a tragedy. A million lost lives is a statistic." Mulling over the insensitivity of these words, how come I can actually agree with this and it feels disgusting. In addition to the number of deaths that occur, the proximity in which they happen also have a great affect on how personal one feels about it.This morning I came across this story, "Six Bombs kill 160 in Baghdad". Seeing this headline on any other day I would simply just think, how terrible but due to where it happened and the size of the killings it is impossible to fully understand the significance of the event. But with VT and the recency of the event I automatically compared the two.
The Tech shootings are a tragedy which I can easily feel my self connected to in which the event really hit me. Seeing 160 dead in Baghdad, it is hard feeling the same sadness for those in Iraq with the students and teachers in Blacksburg.
It would be impossible and a depressing life for one to feel the same sadness about all deaths and killing like those at Tech, but having these occasional, rare thoughts makes you think more about the world and all of us in it. It always brings up bitter emotion in myself when thoughts of comparisons of lives comes across my head. I try to invalidate those thoughts and try to imagine the neurons and synapses causing these ideas to stop and hopefully focus their attention on something else but thats just a distraction.
I don't feel the value of a human's life changes whether they are American, Iraqi, Chinese and most will agree with this. But having such strong emotions about a particular incident and then seeing a massacre across the world happen and just treat it like another news story puts things in an unenjoyable perspective.
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I watched a video this weekend on the horrible things going on in Africa. Nearly 150,000 people are dying on a monthly basis over there mostly due to lack of knowledge of AIDS. That is the equivalent of the Tsunami happening every month over there.
Then you look at the 160 that die in Baghdad and how awful that is brings it a little bit closer because we have troops there and might know someone that knows someone.
Then VA Tech 32 passed away right in our backyard near our friends, our homes.
Now I do not mean to take away anything from the VA Tech tragedy, but just to know how much hardship there is in the world really makes you realize how selfish we can be in only having concern for something that happens locally in a place we feel comfortable in.
I don’t see it as depressing though, I see it as opportunity. So much opportunity to make the people we meet better and the world we live in better. To genuinely appreciate all that we do have and to take the struggles we have in our own lives into perspective.
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