The recent flood of commentaries on the Paris bombing of Charlie Hebdo prompted another facile Facebook image change. All of a sudden people who had never read the satire magazine, or even knew it existed, were eager to empathize visually by posting je suis Charlie. I applaud empathy for victims of any horrific murder scenario, but the same day as the cartoonists and policemen were killed, about 40 Yemeni police cadets were killed in an al-Qaeda bombing and now we learn that Boko Haram has brutally murdered more than 2000 Nigerians. So should every one who was mourning the Parisians now switch over to the Yemenis or Nigerians? And if tomorrow there is, as there likely will be, yet more deaths somewhere else, do we just keep je suising along?

My problem with this digital outpouring of Western empathy is that it is relative. When one of “us” is harmed, it cuts deep. But why do we have such little deep seated sorrow over others who are not like “us”? Is a Nigerian life in the bush or a young Yemeni man standing in a line less valuable than a Parisian cartoonist? If it is the act that we abhor, and indeed should abhor, should we not shed tears for all the victims. The Nigerians killed were apparently mainly children. Do we care? I have yet to see a je suis Nigerian on Facebook, at least by those who were quick to identify with the satire magazine.

The first time I saw the “je suis” icon, my eyes played a trick on me or perhaps some part of my brain that is still trying to fathom such acts of hatred: I thought it said jesus, just a misspelling by adding the i. Ah yes, what would jesus do if some cartoonist drew a picture of him with a nuclear bomb up his ass? I am not a prophet, but I suspect he would be more alarmed at the idea of nucelar bomb and the destruction it can wreak than a drawing. Christians have been avoiding that “turn the other cheek” advice for some 2000 years and are only too quick to draw the Gethsemane sword that jesus told peter to put away. Maybe that assumed misspelling has a message. Perhaps by adding the “i” inside the word “jesus”, it is less important what Jesus is reported to have said than what “i” want to think.

Consider the number of Nigerians killed by Boko Haram, and all those who are now dying in the aftermath: 2000 and counting. The reports say that there were so many dead bodies that the authorities stopped counting. There are estimates that 10,000 have been killed in this fighting last year and over a million and a half people displaced. News about Boko Haram flashed briefly across the major media screens last summer with the kidnapping of Nigerian girls, but then the issue disappeared.

There is, of course, a problem in carrying the metaphor of turning the other cheek too far, especially when most of us only have two cheeks. The ugly fact is that just as human beings are capable of the most loving and caring acts, some are also evil to an extent that makes Satan look like a saint. But there is no DNA for bad deeds; cultural conditioning is what warps us and there is often a common denominator for individuals who let hate carry them to extremes. Poverty and lack of hope are generally part of the mix, not as causes, but as part of a bundle of things that can cause a person to lose all sense of conscience.

So I choose not to be je suis Charlie Hebdo or Nigerian or any specific act of horror but rather je suis human, human in the best sense of what we are capable of being.