Each day an encyclopedia of misery is written with the ink of human suffering, tears, and blood. Children starve, endure neglect, and are prostituted. Husbands beat their wives. Young men die in war. Hospital wards are full of the diseased and dying. Mothers pine away for children lost to the world. Nursing homes smell of death and disinfectant. A family’s lone breadwinner loses his job. Hungry men, women, and children scrounge dumps for any morsel of refuse to satisfy their gnawing, bloated stomachs. Crops fail. Currencies are debased. Homes burn, collapse, or flood. Six thousand years into man’s existence, with marvelous technology at his fingertips and the hubris to match, humanitarian agencies galore, an avalanche of pity-evoking media exposure, and a wealth of painful and pleasant experience upon which he might draw for warning, direction, and comfort, he still suffers, sometimes horribly.