Oy vey - thoughts go out to those affected and their families..
Patton Oswalt wrote a good short diatribe on the event:
I agree - but let me go further and maybe in the other direction. This is a rash on Boston's history, and in no way is it not intolerable. But think - lots of people die each day in the city of Boston, and where is the outrage then? Where is the attention? Should we be as attentive to "lesser disasters"? Maybe if we are, we allow ourselves to become complacent to them, maybe even more so than now.
A complex problem that will likely take a banded effort to resolve.
Ben Garrison wrote on Google+, as inspiration for my thought:
Food for thought.
Patton Oswalt wrote a good short diatribe on the event:
Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."
I agree - but let me go further and maybe in the other direction. This is a rash on Boston's history, and in no way is it not intolerable. But think - lots of people die each day in the city of Boston, and where is the outrage then? Where is the attention? Should we be as attentive to "lesser disasters"? Maybe if we are, we allow ourselves to become complacent to them, maybe even more so than now.
A complex problem that will likely take a banded effort to resolve.
Ben Garrison wrote on Google+, as inspiration for my thought:
75 people died today in the Boston metro area. And yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. The explosion today wouldn't even be noticeable on a graph.
That's not to suggest that the right response is to be calloused to bad things happening, but it's extremely important to have that perspective if you're thinking about how to fix those bad things (and if fixing them is worth the opportunity cost).
...in fact, what I want to really encourage you to remember is that horrible things are happening around the world on a continual basis - so continual that they're not considered newsworthy. But the continual horrible things that aren't newsworthy tend to be the things that are much easier to fix - like child mortality from malnutrition, preventable diseases spread because of lack of access to clean water.
So if you take some time to mourn something tragic today, maybe also take the time to mourn the 20,000 children who will die today (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day) because of easily fixable problems...and maybe think about what you can do about it.
Food for thought.
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