Alright, I was watching the 5 oclock news today and I hearh something that momentarily scared me.
They said.
"New update from Texas today, the death toll is rising to unbelieveable numbers." at this point I got worried then I heard.
"2 more people died today, making it 28." and though I was sad for their families I couldn't help but think, is that really unbelieveable numbers?
All around the world people die from sickness, natural disasters, and in some cases civil unrest. We hear all the time when other countries go through epidemics, the death numbers are almost in the triple digits in days.
Have we in America gained such ignorant tunnel vision that the 28 people dead here in America is a bigger problem, and causes a bigger panic to us, then hundreds dieing else where, women, children, defenseless people?
Now I understand, yes it may be because it is on our own soil and yes we have more develpoed medicine, but this is only one of the many examples I have seen, this one just brought the thought to the front of my mind.
Please share your thoughts with me on this.
I tend to bury my head in the sand about tragedy and death. I know it is a common occurrence too, so I try to steer away from that type of news to keep my self positive. The last thing that actually gave me feelings of terror and sadness was watching the tidal wave that hit the Japanese shore March 2011. I had not watched a huge tragedy occur since watching Katrina and 9/11 here. News also tends to be sensationalized differently in different cultures too, so I think that has something to do with the way news reaches people in different parts in the world.
ReplyDeleteI was saying something very similar to this, to a friend the other day. You're right, Americans tend to turn a blind eye to the daily death tolls in other parts of the world. The really sad fact is, that we've become immune to the daily murders in our own country. In 2010, 617 people were murdered in Los Angeles county alone! Granted, they weren't all killed in a "news worthy" mass murder. They were killed day, by day, by day. They weren't all criminals, or drug dealers. They weren't all gang bangers either. Many were men women, and children, simply going about their daily lives. Most of those 617 people, warranted a two minute report on the local news. Yeah, we ignore those statistics in the rest of the word, and it seems pretty disturbing, that we ignore them in our own backyard as well!
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