Hell of a Book

by Jason Mott

When you question whether or not people are actually real, you can’t help but feel a little stoic at the news that someone has died. And it’s not that you’re a bad person, it’s just that you have trouble getting emotionally involved in the life of someone who may or may not be real. And let’s face it: in this world that we live in, the fact of the matter is that it’s hard to think of anyone as being real. Everyone is just an image on a screen somewhere. Even the people that we meet and come across in the flesh eventually get reduced down to an image on a screen as we interact with them and their social media. So when Sharon shows Jack and me the grieving family on the screen, I can only offer up the normal amount of concern for these people who I have never met and will never meet. And that’s okay. That’s what people are. Science has proven that there’s a limited number of people that we can ever actually care about. It’s just a limitation of our brain and our emotions. So there’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make me—or even Jack—a bad person if we see the man and the woman standing at the lectern crying and the only thing we’re able to muster is faux concern.