By David K. Shipler
We awoke
this morning to the terrible news of the devastating earthquake in Nepal, where
our son and daughter-in-law used to live doing humanitarian work, and where
they have many friends. Through them, we also know several people there, so our
natural and urgent need was to learn whether our friends and theirs were OK.
Fortunately, the answer was yes, all were accounted for, which brought a sense
of great relief. And then I felt a wave of guilt for being relieved just
because those who perished were unknown to me personally. Was it enough to ache
with diffuse sorrow at a distant tragedy, instead of being cut by a sharp edge
of personal grief?
We each
live at the center of concentric circles of affinity, from our immediate
families close in the middle, to rings of wider relatives, to dear friends,
then more casual or professional acquaintances, and out into the wilderness of
humanity at large. And within that vast reservoir of anonymous people, our
connections and concerns—and pain of loss—are often determined by how alike the
victims are to us.
Years ago,
a bunch of us reporters at The New York Times tried to graph the way this
unconscious calculation shaped news judgments.
