Two Things Worth Mentioning

[bludragon]

1.) As if "the Long War" wasn't tragic enough: articles from war correspondants about the culture divide."There's no point in saying 'I told you so.' It won't bring back the dead. I guess every generation just has to learn the hard way that nothing good can ever come of violence, and no military solution will ever achieve what it claims to

Comments

[nebulablue]

What's news to me is that it was ever in style. I thought it was just geeky weirdos who did this thing called blog. In answer to your question: because I feel like it. (:

The above comments remind me of Eddie Izzard. 'Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people, and we can't even deal with that. We think that if someone kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital and they look at you through a small window forever. And over that, we can't deal with it. You know? If somebody's killed 100 thousand people, we're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100 thousand people?! You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym!"'

[bludragon]

Yep, one death makes you a murderer, 10,000 deaths makes you a conqueror.

Nebula Blue, this is little e. little e, this is Nebula Blue. I have yet to meet either one of you in person, but from the quality of our conversations and the eloquence of your respective journals, I can pretty confidently say you're both quality individuals, even though we are all worlds apart.

Funnily enough, this is precisely why I keep coming back to Livejournal and internet communities-- here you meet people from the inside out. It's typically a while before you get any real impression of what they really look like, but you get to find out all about what a person is like on the inside first. (I met Steapie in person about 5 years after I started talking with her. Hell, for that matter, I first met my wife Sparrow on Friendster.)

That's not to say I don't like IRL meetings and interactions. But it's nice to have non-shallow conversations once in a while. :-)

[little_e_]

Greetings.

I think over a certain amount, you're right, we can't handle it.

Hell, I can't even handle distances over a certain amount. People are like, 'How many feet long is the store?" and I'm like 'I have no idea! I just work there every day!"

We can't put it into any sort of context... 10 people, well, that's like losing all of your friends. 20 people is like your friends + your family (unless you've got a huge family or something.)

More than that, and you're getting beyond people's ability to empathise. it's like, 'Imagine you woke up tomorrow and the entire city were dead."

It's just really hard to do.

[bludragon]

I think it's worth mentioning that Hollywood has come close to giving you a feeling of what that would be like (that is, losing the entire city).

Specifically, "the Omega Man" and "28 Days Later" both come to mind.

[little_e_]

This is probably true. There are probably also books which do the same thing.