London Bombing
Today, about fifty thousand people died of hunger in poor countries. And fifty people died in bomb attacks in London. Guess which one made the world news.
Bombing is unusual and dramatic. Naturally it features on the news. But I fear that it will influence policy. Even worse, it may give our leaders another excuse to bomb others. We always bomb others far more than others bomb us.
Death by bombing is horrific and distressing. So is death by cancer. Or death in a road accident. Or death in many ways. Every year, tens of thousands of people die in horrific and distressing ways. Bomb attacks barely register in the statistics. I wish we would base our priorities on human needs, instead of glorifying terrorists and giving them attention they do not deserve.
posted by Chris Tolworthy at 9:09 PM
3 Comments:
I also hope this event doesn't trigger another invasion. Things in our own backyard have a tendacy to catch our attention more than outside, I believe that is just the nature of the beast. Sometimes when things become so common, we grow tolerant to it. A couple of examples of it would be the Jews and the palestinians. One report showed how the jews have come to expect bombings a way of life. This next one I know a bit from personnal experience, the feed the children commercials come on and hit you night after night and I come to ignore them altogether add that to some charities being so fraudulent that they have lost credibility. I don't neccessarely want our nations to feed other countries, more good would come if they had the oppertunity to an education and develop there country along with food aid. If people didn't have a need for religion, I actually feel things would be better off. This might sound strange to some Christian, Jew, etc. but alot of problems stem from religion.
We all have our place, yours seems well defined by your blog, use it as your podium. It is hard to push a wall down by yourself, but if you can get enough people to assist, great things are possible.
Chris, maybe you could consider addressing the ever growing population. I would be interested in your take.
You flatter me! I don't really have anything interesting to say on population (though that's never stopped me before). But I promise that if any population related issue comes up in the headlines I will go off on my usual half baked rant. My problem is always keeping it short. Population is a VERY big topic. In more ways than one.
My take on your comment is that terrorism, famine, plagues, pestilence, etc., are things that happen to other people, so it's big news when it happens to us. In the American news bid'ness, it's referred to as a "man bites dog" story.
In response to TS's population concern, the Green Revolution of the last 30 years or so has increased crop productivity dramatically, particularly in China and India. The real problems with population appear to be distribution of resources (used as a weapon in places like Sudan) and use of scarce resources like fuel (witness the rapid economic growth in India and China, for example). Technological advances, including in agriculture, really can alleviate some of the problems, at least in the abstract.
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