Re:Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astro...
by JohnBooty on Monday July 25, 2022 @09:31PM
(#32233234)
Right, but how many far-away people can you care about? There's the distance factor and then there's the quantity factor.
When there is a major disaster, you will
see people with very differing opinions
drop their "simple" conflicts and work
together.
This is true, and one of the best parts of human nature.
But does it scale to tricky, nuanced, thorny questions?
A natural disaster is an entirely unambiguous event. We all think, "Earthquake bad. People trapped under rubble bad." and want to help them directly or indirectly. Some of us help more vigorously than others and some do nothing, but we all agree that the earthquake is bad and we would like the poor victims to suffer less.
It's harder to scale this cohesion up to tackle issues that are actually thorny and nuanced. Look at how fractured many countries were regarding COVID-19 and the vaccines, for example. Or the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict. Or whatever.
But does it scale to tricky, nuanced, thorny questions?
A natural disaster is an entirely unambiguous event. We all think, "Earthquake bad. People trapped under rubble bad." and want to help them directly or indirectly. Some of us help more vigorously than others and some do nothing, but we all agree that the earthquake is bad and we would like the poor victims to suffer less.
It's harder to scale this cohesion up to tackle issues that are actually thorny and nuanced. Look at how fractured many countries were regarding COVID-19 and the vaccines, for example. Or the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict. Or whatever.