week four_the each "One" behind statistics

When something is shown as a whole, even it is actually made of a lot of different "parts", we are likely to forget the fact that each single part of the whole thing has something of its own.

Seeing charts and figures day after day making us forget what are the things behind these stats we see: they are dollars lost or earned by different individuals; they are injuries spread over various bodies; they are death of both known and unknown ones. Take the example of lists of victims appear on newspapers after disasters, behind each "one" of the number there is a life, this life has his or her story, and whether catchy or not, this life is worth respect, or at least some thing more than a simple glance.

If you are a blogger, you may have noticed that many blogs you find when browsing randomly (don't tell me you've never done this before) are "dead" years before in fact. People share their photos and experiences and thoughts by blogging, and then just left the little website alone and forgot it at some time. All the limited words and images are our only knowledge about some one we probably will never see in our whole life. What is happening on them now? It's a meaningless question for our lives have no connection to these strangers we see online at all, like every single individual hiding behind the datum shown in disparate conditions every day.

Yes, meaningless, but since these people are also inhabitants on this planet, how can we just don't care?

* Cholera map made by John Snow, each black dot stands for a death caused by cholera. Deaths here are just little dots, through which no further information of the dead can be seen.