This is a depiction of the rescue operation that has the whole world watching: 12 children trapped 6 kilometers in a cave with their football coach. Up till now I have not heard what on earth this coach was thinking off to go in to subterranean caves in the monsoon season. Anyway in the mean time a ferry boat capsized killing over 50 people in the same country and over 100 people died in Japan because of floods. In both cases there are still many people missing too. But somehow it did not catch the imagination and philosophers and other learned people try to explain to us why this is. One answer was that the press managed to make the cave incident more accessible to the people because we saw the faces of the victims and letters they wrote to their parents. And it was a limited amount of trouble. Personally I think we are suckers for a good ending and as 8 have been rescued and there is good hope for the rest everyone is waiting for that feelgood moment of a successful endeavor. While with the other disasters it is all too anonymous and too much. We hear about deaths at sea practically every day because of the constant influx of people who are fleeing war or famine from Africa or other countries. Horrible as it sounds, we have become a bit indifferent to it. With climate change throwing more and more typhoons, fires, storms and volcano eruptions at us with a lot of human suffering in its wake, it has become a bit too much. Politicians think by throwing up walls and making it as difficult as possible for people to seek a better life in the more affluent countries this whole influx can be stopped. Too late! That is what the Romans thought when the so called barbarians were encroaching on their borders. At least they did not also have to cope with the devastating effects of climate change. The reason the Eastern Roman Empire lasted 1000 years longer