Inured to Death

In his book, Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm suggests that the human race may become more comfortable with slaughter through repeated exposure. He postulates that "Perhaps ten million dead (in WWI) hit those who had never expected such sacrifice more brutally than fifty four million (WWII) hit those who had already once experienced war as massacre." Tom Brokaw called it the "Greatest Generation" but if it takes a bloodbath like that to consecrate a generation with greatness I hope my generation accepts a more modest descriptive title. we are building up our own little mound of corpses but the twentieth century created an Everest.