/christ/ you've got a bit of a philosophical bent (far more intelligible than the monkeys on that other board now prove me wrong)…
At the risk of alienating every ozfailian, and probably Parisian, and Murkin (just cuz) on this board … This pic, it was aaaaaaaall the pretty flowers hundreds-if-not-thousands of people ejaculated around the scene of an alleged terrorist act in Sydney a bit over a year ago:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-16/sydney-siege-gunman-two-hostages-dead/5969162
Why?
See, I can understand people going this apesh!t over Diana a few years ago because although it was creepy and insane, she was a celebrity and had LOTS of fangirls. And I can understand a few of the people in who regularly used that cafe thinking "eek that could have been me" leaving flowers, and, of course, people who knew the TWO victims, but the place probably only has two-or-three thousand customers, and surely not ALL of them are leaving flowers… And a mere TWO victims and enough flowers as though 9-11 had just happened. But, the same thing happened in Paris with flowers in great HEAPS. In fact, go-go-google "terrorism flowers" and you won't lack for hits – it's pretty-much the norm now.
Roll back the clock a hundred years (and you don't need to go that far) and people DID NOT leave great heaps of flowers for the Crown Prince assassinated in Sarajevo. In fact, one hundred years ago, Europe was under seige from pretty much the same kind of nutty stupidity of terrorism as it is now from anarchists bombing everything in sight.
So, explain that shit.
WHY do people feel the need to share in the grief of strangers? Is it, as I will contend, out of fear? Sure, there has been a hundred years of cultural shift since then that might explain it, but that only reinforces my point: a hundred years ago, God was in heaven and although people weren't exactly Christians, they were at least mostly deists still (with a thick Christian heritage), and still believed in the comfort and unity the idea of God brought. Not so much now.