I'm sure you've heard the saying that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. In this case, even though no one died, someone's perception o

I'm sure you've heard the saying that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. In this case, even though no one died, someone's perception of reality was mortally wounded, and each reader of the article might have his or her grasp of reality materially changed. On the general topic, in the calculus of human suffering, how many small insults equals a death? How many dashed ideals equals a tragedy? This isn't meant to either disparage or inflate human suffering or try to mathematize human experience, only to ask what tools we use to quantify the human condition.