World had an interveiw with Robert George and Chris Tollefsen, two authors of a book entitled Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. This statement struck me in its far reaching implications.
"Embryos at risk of destruction [from stem cell research] suffer from two disadvantages when other human beings think about what is owed to them, though neither is ultimately unique to embryos. The first is the disadvantage of distance. Like those that suffer on the other side of the globe, embryos are distant from our awareness: We cannont see them, we do not know them personally, they cannot ask for our help. Second, the suffer the disadvantage of numbers. We cannot adequately respond, emotionally, when thousands of persons are killed or otherwise harmed; it owuld overwhelm us. And there are hundreds of thousands of embryos currently cryopreserved and considered "spares" from in vitro fertilization procedures."
Distance and numbers... People that are far away from us, people that are in groups that are so large we can't really comprehend...
And sometimes we have difficulty caring about the individuals we know and interact with every day.
And is this the reason that thinking about praying for celebrities seems odd to me? (See this post.) Who are we called to love? Who is my neighbor?
"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers..."
That has to do with people I see and can help. What about those I can't see, and really can't help? Are they my neighbors too?
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