Suffering and Sentimentality

onward forever: my robot will be pleased

If you starve to death, you experience all the starvation that has ever been or ever can be. If ten thousand others starve with you, their suffering does not make you ten thousand times as hungry nor prolong your suffering ten thousand times. You should not therefore be oppressed by the frightful sum of human suffering. There is no sum. Two lean women are not twice as lean as one nor two fat women twice as fat as one. Poverty and pain are not cumulative, and you must not let your spirit be crushed by the fancy that it is. If you can stand the suffering of one person, you can fortify yourself witht the reflection that the suffering of millions is no worse.


-George Bernard Shaw