Fairly Philosophical Friday: The Greater Tragedy

There is a quote, misattributed to Joseph Stalin, that goes something like this: "The death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." When people use this quote, they're often using it to show Joseph Stalin is an evil fuck, the implication being that good, decent people could never think that way. I got bad news for you. We all think that way. The human mind is incapable of processing a number as big as a million; it can barely process a few hundred. And our culture revolves around this uncomfortable fact. Murder is about the most horrendous thing someone could do. Yet, war is perfectly justifiable because the countless numbers of enemy soldiers and citizens are just faceless statistics. Even the casualties and fatalities on our side are just statistics. And our news? The war in Afghanistan is lucky to get any mention anymore. But the bombing in Boston that happened this Monday? Wall to wall coverage. As of this writing, three died in that tragedy. Thousands of American soldiers and who knows how many Afghans have died in the Afghanistan conflict.

Now, I'm not trying to be callous. The bombing in Boston is truly a tragedy and I hope they catch the sons of bitches who did it. But we tend to rarely think about the much larger tragedies that have occurred. The Holocaust, one may argue, is the exception to that rule. But even then, I think we use the Holocaust to show how evil Hitler was, and not to contemplate the magnitude of that genocide. A case in point: Americans of European descent have nearly wiped out the natives. As a white male living on land formerly occupied by…some tribe…maybe the Arapahoe…rarely do I see or hear that genocide being talked about. Yes, I could easily look up which Native American tribe called home in what is now known as the greater Denver area. But the point is: that knowledge has never been welded into my brain. In fact, days, weeks, months go by where I don't even consider the fact that my heritage had murdered millions of Native Americans. Wait, it wasn't murder because it wasn't a single individual murdering another individual. So let me rephrase: I usually don't consider the fact that my heritage staticified millions of Native Americans.

But Sean, what are we to do if we cannot conceive of millions of people? Well, maybe we could try harder. Let's do a thought experiment. Those three people who tragically died in Boston, imagine those are your three closest loved ones. That part's not too hard; you might've already been doing that when you heard the news. That's what makes it so compelling news anyway. Now imagine those three closest loved ones actually represent 1000 people. So you got the death of 3000 people on your mind, about the US fatality rate of a modern protracted conflict instigated by our United States government (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan.) Now imagine the 37 people closest to you have died. At this point, you're probably expanding your circle to include all the people you really care about, and a fair amount of people you know whose death would be tragic, but you wouldn't be that heartbroken over. Again, multiply by 1000 and you get the US fatality rate for the Korean War. Now let's go to 58 people, that is, 58,000 people. That's the US fatality rate for the Vietnam War. Already, I'm sure in this thought experiment, it's getting hard to distinguish between 37 people dead and 58 people. Your mind is thinking: well, my closest loved ones are dead in both cases, but those other people dead are not going to be too great an emotional burden.

I could go on and on, up and up, to belabor the point. But I shall spare you. The next time you catch yourself thinking like pseudo-Stalin, try doing that thought experiment. Imagine your loved ones murdered brutally before your very eyes. Try making those statistical millions into personal tragedies. It is dark contemplation, true, but if we considered it, I think we would go into fewer wars, and the world would be a better place because of it.

Yes, the Boston bombing is a tragedy. But the greater tragedy is that we forget about the greater tragedies.