It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation. — Rudolf Virchow

(gleaned from happylittletree5)

Yes, that Rudolf Virchow, the dude who lurks in all 2nd year medical students brains, famous for the left supraclavicular lymph node that heralds gastric cancer, and for the triad that explains the pathophysiology of deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.

But I digress.

I am frequently amazed and not a little horrified to see the sorts of conditions that human beings can adapt to. Neverending war. Famine. Plague. The conditions of the apocalypse are already present on earth right now and sometimes even in the U.S., maybe not even a block away from where you live, and many of us go blissfully along, unaware.

On one hand, you can look at the tragedy and horror that many people are damned to and realize that you are probably extraordinarily lucky, and that you should count your lucky stars that you aren’t in prison, you have a place to live, you have food to eat.

On the other hand, it makes it harder and harder to believe that a benign hyperintelligence (hereafter abbreviated to “God”) is actually running this place.

Interestingly, I was gazing absently at ESPN this afternoon and they ran a little retrospective on Magic Johnson’s announcement about having HIV, which happened 15 years ago on this day. I remember it rather starkly. My mom was taking me, my brother, and my sister to school when we heard it on the radio.

You stop and think about all the kids with HIV in Africa who don’t even make it for 15 months, and I can’t help but wonder why the older antiretrovirals aren’t as cheap as penicillin yet. 15 years is plenty of time to turn a profit, especially when you consider the numbers just in the U.S. (over a million cases and counting.)

But whatever, I have smaller fish to fry. I’m not going to save the world from rapacious pharmaceutical companies just quite yet.