Regret?

You know I have been feeling weird since writing that post last night - does it seem that I am not being sympathetic enough for the Virginia massacre? Because I am - I think it was horrible. I am a very good candidate for knowing how horrible the loss of a loved one is and how terrible a time is spent trying to cope and make sense of it all. The loss of any human life is tragic, full stop. And comparing tragedies is wrong I know but it is massacres like the one on Monday that should remind us how horrible and tragic the situation in Iraq is. Can anyone make sense of the loss of 171 lives in one day? the number of people that are effected because the dead in Iraq also have families and friends. But since we are removed from the situation, we don't think about it. Here we see pictures of the families and friends of the affected, we see people grieving because of what could have been but fortunately wasn't, alumni of Virginia Tech that are grieving simply because of the shooting happening in their school. We are witness to this and we realize the magnitude of the horror. Can anyone say we are realizing the horror happening over in Iraq? and iraq is just an example country - think of Darfur, Palestine/Israel, Somalia, etc. Why is it that we prefer to change the channel to Friends, than watch what is going on over there? because we are responsible for them?

I don't understand the world - I know that if I turned on the TV and only watched all the bad things happening around the world, I would become very depressed - we need to see the beauty around us and the hope and the joy but we need to do it in an informed way. Then and only then do we end up really appreciating the beauty, the hope that we have and the wonder of it all.

Probably it's time I get off my soap box, but the inequality in the world is tragic.

One human life is not worthier than another.

Ignoring it and turning a blind eye on it is a crime itself.

Numbers

Tonight's episode of the Daily Show had a very interesting moment - John Stewart had invited an Iraqi author and they were discussing the war in iraq. At one stage JS mentioned the Virginia shootings and then mentioned how difficult it is for people to deal with this crime and how many innocent people had died and how their families were trying to cope - he followed this by mentioning that Iraq goes through higher number everyday - how do the Iraqis deal with it.

It is true, you look at the news today and there is an article in NY Times about how 171 people died today - TODAY!! and this is just one normal day in Iraq. All of US is obsessing over this shooting and then you have this violence caused by the US on the other side of the world.
Preemptive strike right? And then they wonder why there are these shooting rampages occurring so frequently in US. Not that I want to take away from the tragedy of it, but putting it in perspective, what is 33 deaths against 171? and that is one time only thing as well.
Probably I am sounding callous but haven't we turned callous when dealing with Iraq? The numbers pile up and we don't even notice them anymore.