Reactions to Tragedy

I found this very interesting article, by Shankar Vedantam at the Washington Post about a scientific study looking at how people (as groups) react to tragedy. Essentially, they determine that there are "two distinct forms of moral reasoning." The most interesting paragraph is:

But our mental systems can come into conflict in the case of terrorism and large-scale disasters: Our focus on perpetrators who intentionally cause harm prompts us to minimize the effects of "mundane" tragedies such as floods, famine and disease outbreaks, because those do not have a sinister agent behind them.

I highly recommend the whole article at the Washington Post.

Food for thought...