I've been debating getting back into writing and something today set me on a track. For future reference, when anyone sees this, today is the day after a man, with no prior history and no indication of this sort of thing happening (so far, anyway) opened fire from a 32nd story window of a casino-hotel in Las Vegas and sprayed automatic weapon fire into a crowd attending a concert. Then, because the day needed to be somehow worse, "Tom Petty Found Unresponsive". He may, or may not currently be dead, depending on which news report has it right, but he is at least brain dead, and that is a fine hair to split. (topic of a future post)
At any rate, I had read a conversation on Facebook where one person was lamenting the death of Tom Petty, and another was railing against them for complaining about the death of one person, just because he was famous, when so many others had died. I started a response, then decided it was too long to ever be read on that format. So I took it here. That's only half true. My first thought was: "Because F--K you, that's how," poet laureate that I am. But then I started the longer post. If you know that person, or even someone else who said something similar, please show this to them.
If I mention that people in India are starving, and you respond that people in Ethiopia have it worse; that doesn't mean that the people in India suddenly have food.
If I say that there is a drought in Brazil, and you respond that it's worse in South Africa; that doesn't mean is started raining in Brazil.
In physics everything is relative. Jupiter is large, but not compared to most of the exoplanets we've discovered. Those comparisons have meaning. When assigning a value to the impact death has on your life, any such attempts are trite and sophomoric.
-4 is more negative than -2. That does not make -2 a positive integer.
59 people dying is more than 1 musician. But that doesn't mean we'll be going to a Tom Petty concert next year.
