This is a great post that contains insights on how our brain works, how we fit into society, and stereotypes:
It’s simply the way our brains are built. We each have a certain circle of people who we think of as people. Usually it’s our own friends and family and neighbors and classmates and coworkers (or at least the ones in your department) and church or suicide cult.
This is literally the reason society doesn’t work quite right. The people who exist outside that core group of a few dozen people are not people to us. They’re sort of one-dimensional bit characters.
[…]Or think of it this way: Which would upset you more, your brother dying, or a dozen kids across town getting killed because their bus collided with a truck hauling killer bees?
Which would be bigger news to your neighbors, those dozen mutilated bus children across town or 15,000 dead in an earthquake in Iran?
See full article. Long, but worth reading. Take some time out and read it some day.