Death is tragic. There can be no doubt. Family members grieve. Friends, and associates grieve.
Violent death, understandably, seems more tragic. Especially when it is often times done in hate, or anger gone mad in other ways.
Still, though. A society needs more than to share in the grief, or to be repulsed by the hate, the anger of the moment, or the responsibilities for either that brought them into being in the first place (seeking justice, or revenge, and/or, more hopefully, understanding). A society needs perspective because a society must consider, and decide for the good of the many, as opposed to the good of the few (as Mr. Spock might put it).
So what I propose is this: When the violence of the type depicted in this latest attack in London occurs, let the source of the report also indicate every other type of non natural, violent death, that occurred to citizens of our nation that day (where these attacks occur, doesn't matter). And do it by type, and ordering it, in descending order, by number of deaths. And if this does happen in a different country, you could also contrast our list of violent deaths, in comparison to the nation of the current tragedy.
The point here is this: For all of the things we would focus on, and react to, we must understand a very important fact. Focusing on one thing or another, to the detriment of a thing not getting much focus at all, seldom does society, as a whole, much good; in point of fact doing it more harm than good way too often. This can happen for a lot of reasons, but the primary rule of thumb is to first look at things by priority. And one of the main ways to establish that, at the risk of stating the obvious, is where the death count is highest.
It is just something we constantly need to remind ourselves of because, often times, the need for immediate action has been there for a while and we have just grown inured of it, precisely because of its depressing familiarity. And perhaps even more important, by the very fact that this other, higher death count issue is still with us, it hides a deeper, and more profound problem. The problem, in fact that might be an important factor in not only our highest, violent crime, death count, but quite a few others as well.
Just some more things to think about, now that we are entering Permanent World Crisis Mode.
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