Last Friday, one of the most deadly natural disasters in Filipino history devastated the Leyte, Iloilo, Palawan and Cebu provinces of the poor island nation. Making landfall six times across the Phillipines, Typhoon Haiyan is now estimated to have killed over 3,500 people, displaced 1.9 million, and caused at least $10.5 million worth of property damage. The international community has responded with relief aid, as expected. The United States specifically donated $20 million and deployed several ground teams to evacuate and rebuild, but the sheer magnitude of destruction is still staggering. Several thousand people were still huddled on the Tacloban airport's tarmac on Tuesday, desperate for a seat on one of only two 200-person airplanes lifting refugees out to the less damaged capital city of Manila. All begged for food. Few had eaten since the day before.

The New York Times' front-page headline on Tuesday was the sale of a piece of artwork. "Study of Freud" by painter Francis Bacon purportedly sold for $142.4 million dollars, the most a piece of artwork has ever sold for at auction. The amount paid by Lock Kresler for a portrait of Francis Bacon's friend is seven times more money than the United States government gave to the Philippines for recovery.

Think back over the past week. How many times did you hear about the tragedy in the Philippines? How many articles did you read, how many images did you see, from anywhere you receive news? How many conversations did you have with friends and family about the horrific event? If you're like me, the answer to the last question is a guilty admission of "zero". Though I skimmed through a few articles and saw a couple pictures, I was more concerned with my own affairs than some third-world nation's troubles.

This speaks to a dangerous skepticism in our society. We have become so used to tragedies and so accustomed to hearing that records have broken and suffering is on an incomprehensible scale that we are no longer affected by it. Sure, we'll donate a few dollars to the Red Cross effort, but we are not riveted to the television screen to see the latest developments, or constantly mashing refresh on our keyboards to find out the latest facts and figures. The closest thing to a meaningful human interaction we have about natural disasters is a brief shake of the head, mumble of "global warming" and then moving on with our lives.

Although many of us were still young when it happened, no one can forget the impact Hurricane Katrina had on the American people. Photos were spread across every front page in the country and 24-hour news coverage followed the relief efforts for two full weeks. For long afterward, news and analysis refused to let the American people forget. It was horrible to see, but it reminded us all of our own humanity on a deep, fundamental level, and united a fiercely divided country in aiding its fellow man. USA Today reported that private donations to the relief effort-counting corporate donations and charity groups together-reached a record-breaking $2.7 billion dollars.

Then in 2010, something even more amazing happened. Faced with the Haitian earthquake disaster, a 7.0 on the Richter scale whose epicenter was the capital city of one of the poorest countries on Earth, the American people broke their own record. According to the Huffington Post, we singlehandedly donated three billion dollars to the relief effort, putting people in housing, providing health care to thousands and taking the first critical steps for Port-au-Prince to recover.

Again, as the tragedy unfolded, it was everywhere: charity organizations started, videos of the quake itself surfaced on YouTube and on the most basic level, people talked to each other. Though the island nation has still yet to completely recover, it would be impossible for the city to be at its current level were it not for first-world aid.

While it is far too early to have a total donation amount for U.S. aid to the Philippines, I would like to see the American people outdo themselves yet again. Sadly, this is looking less and less likely. In the days following the typhoon, top headlines on nbc.com were given to bickering Senate members, on National Public Radio to adjustments to the Obamacare website, and even, in the Washington Post, a drug bust. Ordinary day in, day out news was considered more important than the largest natural disaster in a nation's entire history. Haiyan still makes front pages, but in smaller articles, on the bottom of the page, allocated as a less important story. And people refuse to talk about the typhoon. In not one class, not one political conversation with my friends and family has the topic come up over the past several days. I can only hope m
y experience does not speak for the majority.

We've even begun to forget the tragedy of horrors we inflict on ourselves. On Nov. 1, a man entered Los Angeles International Airport and fired an assault rifle, killing a TSA agent. I heard about this story while getting coffee with friends. One read off the CNN report, and we all shrugged and went back to our conversation.

As a Connecticut native, I remember my state's shock and grief at the Newtown shooting. Candlelight vigils were held, sermons were uttered and heard, friends and acquaintances embraced and talked to each other. Seemingly everyone, including myself, knew someone directly affected by the tragedy. The political implications of arms control legislation versus second amendment rights did not matter as much as being there for one another and being generous to one another in whatever way we could.

To be sure, this was partly due to the extreme nature of the Newtown shooting: the victims were elementary school students. But I had been certain that the event had forever changed the residents of my state, making us so sensitive to the problem of this country's mass shootings that we'd struggle to prevent anyone else from again having to endure what we had to endure. Only a few months later, another crazed gunman had become just a brief topic of conversation while sipping hot chocolate.

I do not want to live in a society where the suffering of innocents and the tragedy of needless death is given equal weight to a pop star's new look. The onus is on the news media to prioritize the most important stories, forcing the people to pay attention. But the onus is also on each and every one of us to remember what it means to feel grief for someone we do not know. Remember what it means to feel human.