On human tragedy

Is feeling sad good enough for the 102,000 dead in Burma, or the 8500 who just died in an earthquake in China, or the 200,000 who have died in Darfur, or the 81 who died in Lebanon, or the 20 people who died from tornadoes in the Midwest yesterday, or the 42,000 Americans who died in car accidents last year?
Or how about the 1,000,000 people who die every year from malaria?

Photographs of bodies floating in flood water seem very grave, and they are... It makes me feel gravely concerned and sad... and somewhat defensive. I don't mean to belittle these deaths, but I am irrationally annoyed by the obligation to feel badly.

56,000,000 people die every year - many of them die from violence or disease. Obviously, it is pointless to feel badly for all of these people. But it seems that reading about the most sensationalistic of these deaths is part of life. While the less tragic or concentrated deaths don't make it to our headlines, the more tragic do and give us material about which to have apalled conversations about the tragedy of it all.

Why do these headlines provoke an annoyed reaction from me? It maybe because there is nothing significant I can do about the situations. On the one hand, I feel that these tragedies should be made known, but on the other hand I feel my understanding of the situations is extremely shallow and superficial.

Like my understanding, my sympathy is also shallow and superficial. "Wow, that's incredible... Hmm... wow...", I say, slowly shaking my head.