The fact is that people ignore other people's suffering all the time, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. If we weren't capable of doing so, we would be (as a species) completely fucked, because life _is_ suffering. It's lots of other stuff, too, but it _is_ suffering, much of it not even human caused. Yes, I am astounded by our ability to do so, but strictly speaking _I_ know that _I_ couldn't function otherwise.

Let's start local, and go outward from there.

Rex Krebs raped and then killed two local women brutally. Their suffering, not just the pain of the events, but the pain of knowing that they would die, no matter what they did must have been indescribable. All the joy, all the love, all of the potential, all the beauty of the world was forcefully ripped from them, and they knew it was coming. This is an abomination. I can not even conceive of the loss and the wrongness of this. AND THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!

One further out. Millions of people in OUR country have lives filled with no hope. No possibility of personal advancement, and _NO_ prospects that their children are going to be in any situation other than theirs. So, they abandon the society that has abandoned them, they abandon the false hopes provided by our soulless corporations and they abandon the lies fed to them by the media, which seeks to do little more than placate them. They turn to drugs to make them forget the CRUSHING POINTLESSNESS. They lash out at the society that DAMNED them. And society then pushes them out from the "uncomfortable truth" pile to the "condemned by their own actions" pile, which make society feels a lot better about itself, thank you very much.

One further out. The VAST majority of the earth's population live is ABJECT POVERTY. They, too, have no possibility of advancement, either within their own society, or within the world as a whole. Why? Because the world's economy works (just like everything else) as a difference engine. There can only be action (and profit) if potential differences exist, and the greater the difference the greater the potential for profit. So it is in the best interests of the industrialized nations, the corporations AND THE CITIZENS OF THE INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS to assure that this situation doesn't change. And it hasn't. These people make less in a lifetime than our average citizen makes in a year. To them WE ARE ALL WEALTHY. That isn't just perception, either. WE ARE. What is the leading causes of death in the world? Dysentery, often related to Malaria. This could be stopped with only the most MINOR medical training and infrastructure. But it hasn't been.

In Africa, the last I heard, more than two-thirds of the population has AIDS. And this isn't the distant death sentence (with actual hope of an eventual cure or at least an almost normal lifespan) that the AIDS sufferers in the US have. This is "You'll be dead within the decade, and nothing's going to change that". Two thirds of the population of an CONTINENT!

This is just the tiniest bit of the pain. Some small portion of the suffering. And I can't even internalize this miniscule portion of it. If I did somehow manage to, I'd become a catatonic. I wouldn't be able to function. I can't do anything about it. I can try, but if I dedicated my entire life to any of these topics, my contribution would fall below the noise floor.

And now the tie-in to humor. _THIS_ is why human suffering is funny. Heinlein said "All humor is based on suffering". I don't know if I agree with that assessment, but it certainly is some really significant portion of humor. We laugh, because we are POWERLESS against the crushing sorrow that is OMNIPRESENT. We laugh, because we can do nothing else. We laugh because it isn't us.