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If something is significant, then proximity won't matter -- so if you're even asking that question, you're only asking it about the insignificant things.

• uptown 10y ago
  Estimates place the death toll from the conflict in Syria at about half a million, but your evening newscast likely caps each night's broadcast off with a puff piece about a found dog that had gone missing, or some good deed a local middle-school kid did for his neighbor. If that same slaughter were happening in your home-town, do you think it'd be significant? Don't you still think it's more significant than the puff piece even though it's happening on the other side of the planet? It's certainly easier to ignore things that are further from our field of view, but I don't think it makes them any less significant unless each person ignores the larger world around them.
  • Retra 10y ago
    And Mao Zedong killed maybe 70 million people. Significance is not an objective universal measure. Those deaths in Syria are insignificant. There are 8 Billion + people on this planet. Maybe they'd be significant if they were pandas or tigers or something. And that's a workable perspective.
    • lostlogin 10y ago
      > Those deaths in Syria are insignificant To you. And wow.