A Sad Truth

Here's a blog post from Foreign Policy. Please read the post first because the rest of this will make more sense.

What happened in Virgina Tech was a tragedy, and I was more affected by it than I care to admit. And while an incidence like this evokes such emotion in myself, I can honestly say that I haven't shed a tear about Iraq, about the hundreds that have died there just as innocently as those at the college. The war in Iraq makes me angry and disappointed in our government, and sometimes I wonder how people there are coping, but I've never cried over any of the people that have died due to the war. Not one tear.

I have become so desensitized that I don't even blink when the headline reads something like "102 dead in bomb blast". But when I heard about the shootings at Virgina Tech, I immediately thought about my mom because I could see something like that happening where she works. This hypothetical situation that I imagine made me worried and emotional for a couple of days. And yet, worse is happening around the world, and I don't think twice.

Being without an emotional connection to everyone affords us the ability to quickly forget what is happening somewhere else. I'm not suggesting that everyone should depress the hell out of themselves trying to think about everything that is going on in this world - there's not enough time in the day to do that.

I do worry though that we have all become too desensitized. Although I see great benefit in providing cool, rational responses, I don't think our policies and our reactions to what is happening everywhere should be completely devoid of emotion.