Eh
There is a broad range in self-pity among the humans of the world. In Africa, death and disease
among the native population is regarded as much less horrible than in the eyes of pampered Americans and Europeans. Kim du Toit's excellent article on the reality of life in Africa is a frequent link here, but it's well worth repeat visits. Life in Africa is, in a word, cheap.
Events that we here in America find horrible and loathsome--and tend to scream never again! after--are commonplace in Africa. In fact, horrors that American soil has never seen are pretty common on the dark continent.
We put so much value on human life that we have come to view life as something that does not even belong to the person who, well, doesn't own it after all. We overreact and try to control everything so that these awful things never happen again, and it of course never works, but creates more and serious problems. We throw money at problems like American 'poverty' and the issues in Africa and other parts of the world, never grasping the fact that it will only do more harm than good.
This is the same trap legislators fall into when they don't seem to understand that despite the power they wield over the proles, most problems can't be fixed with laws. Most politicians just can't grasp the concept that they aren't little omnipotent gods on Capitol Hill.
The combination of a true bleeding heart collective urban population and power hungry politicians with the mantra 'try again, harder!' is the rot our nation faces.
Along the way, we entered a period of reverse evolution*, where the few have become so adept at protecting the many that the evolutionary process will reverse until humans are weak enough again that we can not hold back Mother Nature. Or perhaps we will simply lag behind the evolution of disease until another plague that all of our medicine can't fight (and indeed helped create) wipes out most, or all of us.
Fact is, in the long run, the people of Africa might outlast all of us. Sink or swim? We stopped swimming a while ago. Thing is, we didn't sink, we're cruising along on a raft, stagnating in our self-granted glory of achievement.
*I don't know who I first read that from, so I can't give credit, but I didn't come up with the term.
