Something about this article has been nudging the back of my head (Note: its headline used to read, “Was 9/11 Really That Bad?” No doubt I wasn’t the only one who had problems with that one). Beyond the provocative subject matter and valuable political points it raises about American military overreaction, there’s something so basic and so futile in the assertion that, because fewer people died on September 11th than other moments in history, we should reduce its significance in our minds. Sure, this point may pan out in all its sound logic and deductive reasoning based on extensive research and chronicled facts. But it misses one massive, pulsating truth about human beings: based on the rules of emotion, there’s no way in hell it’ll work.

Sure, we’re sentient and intelligent creatures. We can boil history into lucid analytical nuggets and weigh their categorical significance. We can sit through days of Clockwork Orange-esque lectures about comparative death tolls and statistical probabilities, and nod our heads at the conclusion that yes, in the greater scheme of human history, that day was a mere carrot slice in the bubbling stew of aggregate human misery. But none of it erases the emotions that take over, all that raw uncontrollable viscera churning and screeching every time we see replays of planes hitting steel towers on a sunny morning. Like it or not, we’re governed by these emotions. We may not acknowledge them on a regular basis – half of coping in modern society is mastering the art of daily emotional suppression – but they’re always there, scattered around our bellies like swallowed thumbtacks, waiting to pierce at the latest perceived insult, heartbreak or trauma. The more we try to carpet them with rational, well-conceived logic and academia (as professors, doctors, lawyers and other smart-for-a-living types so often do) the deeper they stick.

The fact is that yes, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union caused exponentially more deaths than the September 11th bombings. Rationally, we know this. We may be lifelong scholars on the subject. But it doesn’t matter. None of us (for the most part) were there when the Nazis invaded Russia. On an emotional level, we’re fundamentally incapable of comparing the two. We are the sum of our own experiences, nothing more – there is no cauldron of collective human memory allowing each of us to sip spoonfuls of greater mankind’s joy and misery. Telling someone that their pain, according to the rules of reason and logic, isn’t as bad as someone else’s, that their tragedy isn’t as horrible, that they should simply tone down their emotional reaction because the death tolls aren’t as high, won’t win many converts. Don’t agree? Consider the child who slices her finger and runs sobbing to her ER doctor father.

“Daddy, I cut my finger! It hurts!” she wails.

“Honey, it’s not that bad,” he lectures calmly. “Look, it’s barely bleeding! I saw someone get their arm amputated today after a near-fatal car crash – this cut is nothing compared to that.”

“But…Daddy, it hurts!!”

No real arguing with that.

[Update: To clarify, the author of the op-ed, Johns Hopkins Prof. David Bell, had no part in its original headline, and requested the change. While I didn't doubt from the outset that he never meant to minimize the attacks and that his points related to subsequent actions of the American government and public views on Al-Qaeda, I'd say the disconnect between his academic arguments and the heavy emotional baggage weighing on the issue is still glaring.]