Regarding 1 person vs millions of people, for a very long time I've called this "the ignorance of large numbers." As a NASA engineer I came to this conclusion talking to people who really have no clue about sizes and distances in space. Or conversely, just how small tiny things really can be. Think atomic level. But in the age of PowerBall and MegaMillions, this ignorance certainly apples to people who think that it's worth spending $10, $20, $100 on tickets for these lotteries. "Somebody's gotta win. It could be ME!" Well, actually, no, somebody doesn't need to win. And the idea of the odds being something like 300,000,000 to 1 is utterly meaningless to the majority of people who play. They'd be better off playing the scratch-offs that have odds of 100 to 1. But because the payoff for a scratch-off is in the realm of their understanding, it's not enough. They want millions! Billions! So, similarly with the death of one person vs the death of tens or hundreds of thousands. Those numbers are just too big for most people to comprehend. So it's easy to feel sadness, but it's not a tragedy. The tragedy is the boy who dies kitty corner whom you recognized. I think distance also plays a role. Across the street vs around the world. The deaths of 20,000 Turkish people is real to me because Audi Field in DC, where friends and I have season tickets to DC United soccer, holds 20,000 people. But it's still a lot of people and they're a long way away. I feel sad for the dead and injured in Turkey; my life won't change because of it. I feel more loss for the friends' who lost their 2-year-old grandson to a heart defect. I never met the grandson but I know how it has affected the family.
I'm sure that can somehow be related to the infiniteness of someone's god.
Regarding the Vanity Fair article, because I subscribe to the magazine, I looked it up. In the magazine, the title of the article is "Death Tripping" starting on page 80 of the Feb 23 edition. I haven't read it yet. This weekend. It looks very interesting. And frightening. And it looks like you're right, Rob wants expendable bodies for his army to fight the Chinese when they invade. Oy vey.
Regarding 1 person vs millions of people, for a very long time I've called this "the ignorance of large numbers." As a NASA engineer I came to this conclusion talking to people who really have no clue about sizes and distances in space. Or conversely, just how small tiny things really can be. Think atomic level. But in the age of PowerBall and MegaMillions, this ignorance certainly apples to people who think that it's worth spending $10, $20, $100 on tickets for these lotteries. "Somebody's gotta win. It could be ME!" Well, actually, no, somebody doesn't need to win. And the idea of the odds being something like 300,000,000 to 1 is utterly meaningless to the majority of people who play. They'd be better off playing the scratch-offs that have odds of 100 to 1. But because the payoff for a scratch-off is in the realm of their understanding, it's not enough. They want millions! Billions! So, similarly with the death of one person vs the death of tens or hundreds of thousands. Those numbers are just too big for most people to comprehend. So it's easy to feel sadness, but it's not a tragedy. The tragedy is the boy who dies kitty corner whom you recognized. I think distance also plays a role. Across the street vs around the world. The deaths of 20,000 Turkish people is real to me because Audi Field in DC, where friends and I have season tickets to DC United soccer, holds 20,000 people. But it's still a lot of people and they're a long way away. I feel sad for the dead and injured in Turkey; my life won't change because of it. I feel more loss for the friends' who lost their 2-year-old grandson to a heart defect. I never met the grandson but I know how it has affected the family.
I'm sure that can somehow be related to the infiniteness of someone's god.
Regarding the Vanity Fair article, because I subscribe to the magazine, I looked it up. In the magazine, the title of the article is "Death Tripping" starting on page 80 of the Feb 23 edition. I haven't read it yet. This weekend. It looks very interesting. And frightening. And it looks like you're right, Rob wants expendable bodies for his army to fight the Chinese when they invade. Oy vey.