Originally Posted by Libertine

You are absolutely right. One cannot save the world by oneself. One has to make choices, and set priorities.

Selfishness, choosing oneself and one's loved ones, that I can understand. It might not be particularly admirable, but it makes sense.

The madness comes into play when people choose to engage in a certain amount of philanthropy, but value the life of a single kitten over that of an entire village of starving children in a third world country. That madness becomes positively surreal when they are actually proud of making such choices.

It does explain certain things, though. For example, the mindset of WarChild is not particularly different from that of the arabs who were celebrating in the streets on 9/11. In both cases, people apparently cease to view those living in geographically distant locations and different cultures as humans. They are, quite literally, seen as beings of less intrinsic value than the average house dog.

When one realizes this, it suddenly makes a lot more sense that people engage in war, terrorism and even genocide. They simply fail to acknowledge others as human beings, in the most literal sense.