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  • pishadoot@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    I mean, philosophically all lives are equal.

    But you value people you love, your family (I assume) more than your neighbors. And you care about what happens in your town more than in another city in your country, and you care more about your country than others…

    USA had a pretty bad plane crash a couple months ago in Louisville; about a dozen people died. I care, it was a tragedy, but I guarantee you that the people in Louisville care a lot more than I do.

    And it’s the same reason a nation will care more about its citizens vs the citizens of other nations. Kind of obtuse to pretend that’s not how people work, no?

    • Invertedouroboros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      That’s fair, I was quite tired when I wrote what I wrote so let me expand on that a little bit.

      That is of course true in most situations. I should have clarified this more but primarily when I said “I grew up watching the evening news” I was talking about war on terror coverage.

      I’m not pretending that’s not how people work, it absolutely is and that’s the reason this was exploited. But… there’s this kind of… preformative agony to the whole ordeal that, speaking as an American, does feel uniquely American.

      Empathizing with the death of people you’re close with is natural. But when, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, they are active participants in why people are dying, and then they’re deaths are used to justify sending more people over there to kill and be killed…

      …It kinda just soured me on the whole affair to be honest. And, given the events of last night? It’s something I could easily see happening again. We seem to have dusted off everything else from the Iraq playbook, why not that too?

      Anyways, we’re not disagreeing. There was just more to my point that didn’t quite make it into my post.

      • pishadoot@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        They are yes, as opposed to subjectively on varying levels of personal familiarity. You’d care far more about your spouse or mother dying than a random person in a different country you had no idea existed.

        That doesn’t mean that a random person’s life has more intrinsic value than your mother’s, but TO YOU they will have less. Hence, lives are equal in a philosophical sense but pragmatically that’s not how the world works, ever, or we’d be in a constant state of unending grief at the loss of our fellow humans 24/7.