The paper about desensitization to death is timely due to all the modern events that are going on currently, as well as the culmination of the surroundings our generation was raised in. Movies like Lord of the Rings (I don't watch a lot of movies, haven't seen anything recent since Despicable Me) have casualties in the thousands, and we only mourn when Boromir dies. The deaths are on the side, they have no impact, seemingly no meaning. We watch movies like this all the time, and yet you never see anyone cry in the theaters when Nameless Soldier A gets shot while the hero escapes. Nowadays we have things like Call of Duty and Halo. Call of Duty is a game prominent in American gaming culture, where people can get online and shoot each other. Killing isn't just a side event in these games, it's rewarded. People get excited to kill, and get bonuses and benefits from killing large numbers of people. How is one expected to care about something that is trivialized into a game?
The news that shows up only helps to prove the point. The media was all over the Libyan conflict for quite awhile. Although I'm sure that it had many followers, I noticed that people cared very little about the casualties and events of the conflict, and were much more concerned about the rising gas prices. No sorrow for the people dying, people were instead grief-stricken about the effects on their wallets. Worse yet, after the Japanese tsunami hit, headlines barely mentioned Libya for several weeks, focusing on the event that could produce bigger numbers. In all honesty though, there was quite a response to the deaths in Japan. Thankfully it seems that enough people dying can elicit some emotion in these times, but the number simply seems too high.
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