On lesson 4, it reminds me of the quote : "The death of a man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic". Especially in a sci-fi setting, many of the things you do may affect millions, but those are all statistical people with whom you have no real connection. You need individual cases to be affected that you can see and interact with and be glad that that person is now doing better.

Or, in a more Oots vein, only named characters matter.