I just glanced at a program I have running in the system tray that keeps me abreast of system resources, and noticed that I only had 625 MB of RAM left available. I was rebooting Firefox to free up some more when I realized that (a.) there was still six-tenths of a gigabyte unused, and (b.) that unused RAM was precisely 1,250 times as much as I had in my first computer.

How quickly we get used to big numbers. First kilobytes, then megabytes and now we’re thinking in terms of terabytes (one trillion, 24 million bytes). It becomes meaningless, just like other big numbers: a billion dollars here, a billion there. A trillion for this war, two trillion for that one. A $900 billion annual defense budget that even the Pentagon admits is 25% bigger than it needs to be due to the support of programs that are already obsolete, or unusable in the conditions of modern warfare — or simply unnecessary.

Numbers are meaningless unless they’re our numbers. A couple of over-privileged kids from our town getting wiped out in daddy’s Beemer is a shame. One loved one sick or dying is a tragedy. Thirty thousand children worldwide dying of starvation every day is just a number.

Clearly this is a form of denial; an unwillingness to accept reality. Or maybe it’s tribe-centered. Who really cares about those others? I’m okay; we’re okay.

But what about when we’re not okay; I wonder if the others will care?