*** Maybe "Hypocrisy" is the wrong word for what I'm trying to get at ***
for the last day and a half the water cooler discussion has been ripe with "did you hear about the shooting in Oregon? What a tragedy, all those innocent lives lost... so sad"
Do not get me wrong.
it is sad, it is a tragedy, it is a culmination of gun control issues and mental instability issues. It is a problem with how we do not deal with these issues in the US. This is not my point.
To each person who has talked about the senseless act of violence, I have responded with
"did you know that C-130 crashed in Afghanistan and 7 US soldiers perished today/yesterday?"
The response each time "Oh... yeah... uhh... that's sad.... So about this school shooting in Oregon!"
I am trying to tell people we lost 7 american (and 8 other) lives in a war zone in which war wasn't even being engaged at the time. Nobody cares.
The reason I reference localization is that I live in Oregon. I live, universally speaking, relatively close to the incident that occurred. People here are concerned and whatnot because it happened "In our community" or "In our backyard". Nobody cares or even thinks about the soldiers that were lost because that was "1/2 way around the world" "Soldiers die every day" and "people are used to it". The reports of this nature become background noise but in truth, are no less tragic, and no less important in the grand scheme of things than the shooting that occurred at a community college.
Tl;DR we focus too much on how deaths occurred, and less on the loss of life in general.
Sort: Top
[–] MostlySober ago
I agree with everything you said. But it's understandable that things which are closer to use seem more important even though they might not be in the long run.