"No man is an island, entire of itself; every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the
main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory
were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or
of thine own were: any man's death
diminishes me, because I am involved in
mankind, and therefore never send to know
for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
-John Donne

Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” opens with lines from this poem by John Donne. The meaning of Donne’s words is timeless for it displays the most humane way of understanding humanity. It does so through the recognition of the most significant and tangible bond there is between any existent group of living organisms: the human condition.

More than 200 years later, Hemingway also knew that what really unites us all is not related ethnicity, nationality, religion nor ideologies, but to our humanity.

“Every lost human life is a loss for humanity as a whole.”

This simple and yet powerful idea is evident to us whenever it involves relatives or people close to our environment; it is all the more true, but less evident when it comes to someone unrelated to us. The latter is noticeable when the press decides to humanize statistics and show who the casualties of any incident really were.

Friends, sons, daughters, wives, cousins, mothers, grandparents, and fathers. People with dreams, joys, and sorrows. Humans. Masses nonetheless rarely fathom the meaning of such a notion.

A double truck bombing took place more than a week ago on the hectic streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. That Saturday, the initial reports about the situation suggested that there were at least 20 casualties as a result of the terrorist act. It did not sound like unusual news bearing in mind that Al Shabab, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, is currently engaging the Somali government militarily.

However, by Sunday morning the emergency rescue teams were still unburying corpses from the rubble. After a day, the estimated death toll went from at least 20 deaths to over 300 casualties. The terrorist attack is now twice as deadly as what was formerly considered 2017 deadliest attack (The May 2017 Kabul Car Bombing).

The media covered the truck bombing. CNN, New York Times, Breitbart, Fox News, and many others have all reported on it –in retrospective, their coverage could have been substantially better. Nonetheless, people did not criticize the terrorists who perpetrated the attack or called for international attention to the situation.

People did not massively update their status to #PrayForSomalia.

They did not change their Facebook profile pictures to feature Somalia’s flag and show solidarity either. The attack did not really seem to grasp the attention of the public eye as much as you’d expect it to.

Doing the latter does not entail genuinely caring about what happened. After all, people usually end up forgetting about what they openly claimed that mattered to them through social media. Nevertheless, looking for such trends after happenings like the Las Vegas shooting, the Barcelona terrorist attacks, or Somalia’s recent truck bombings is at the very least a "shock litmus test" that can be performed on the masses.

The results of such a test on Mogadishu’s recent terrorist attack are dire. The over 300 casualties were rapidly forgotten in the pandemonium of the daily news cycle and the audience's bitter cynicism –which is perplexing. If you really think about it, what can be more shocking than the slaughter of 300 people?

Unfortunately, reality continuously reminds us that happenings like this do not really mean that much to people –unless they take place in the West. After all, they cared neither about the terrorist attacks that took place throughout the year in other non-western locations nor about the Rohingya genocide. Reality suggests that masses will certainly not care too much about Somalia either.

If you believe I am overstating my perspective, try the test and see the results for yourself. Do the following:

1. Access Google Trends.

2. Choose two search terms related to two events that occurred during the same day (i.e. “Somalia” and “Yankees”).

3. Set a region of interest (i.e. the United States) and a time frame. Google will display numbers from 1 to 100 to comparatively illustrate how "hot" the searches for a topic in a region are.

The outcome is self-explanatory.