I forgot to post this a couple days before but I found this interesting.
While we were browsing through Mr. Bennetts pictures of his trip to Europe, there was one quote that particularly interested me. This quote was:
"The death of a million people is a statistic, the death of one is a tragedy."
Stalin specifically said this quote, and I find the meaning of the quote very profound. I think it's appalling that the death of millions of people is just regarded as another fact of life. While death is eminent regardless, why do we treat the death of so many as another daily occurence. I'm not saying that it should be a public tragedy for these people, but death is death, and it's heartbreaking, at the very least, that the death of so many would be significantly more important than one person.
Just a thought.
Well, I guess it has to do with the dehumanizing aspect of mass death. They are just numbers, not people.
ReplyDeletePrejudice is a similar phenomenon. once we get to know the individual, we tend to forget about his race. I experience this as a teacher. On day one, I may use gender and race to distinguish between students who I am struggling to recognize. But, after a few weeks, all thoughts of that disappear, to be replaced by an appreciation (or, rarely, dislike) for the person.