The unscheduled second posting about the terrifying and sudden events in Japan which I posted here yesterday* rather said it all for me, and there is very little I can add to those thoughts as we head into the next day. Twenty-four hours can seem an awfully long time when lives are being changed in seconds, and, unlike those who are still standing in the earthquake zone today, already the impact for those of us who are impassive observers is diminishing, despite the fact that I spent a lot of my normal, ordinary, dull little day getting on with things and being very distracted by thinking about and seeing those horrific images that, like the rawness of nature they were depicting, kept on coming.
The more I saw, the more sympathy I felt for the victims, but I also started to feel a bit like the worst kind of voyeur, especially when the media started to wheel out ‘scientific experts’ to give me a moment-by-moment commentary on truly horrific images as if they were talking about a movie or a video game, and repeating the sequences over and over again until they were starting to reduce the magnitude of these terrible things that were still going on to the level of animated wallpaper.
Eventually, their glorification of human suffering (because that is what it really started to feel like) got too much for me to bear, and, because I can, I shut it off. The problem is that, for those people to whom it was actually happening, they could not just switch it off, and that whole dreadful, terrifying day just kept on throwing more and more at them.
Sometimes a picture is worth a million words and we should just shut up and watch and just try to extend some pity towards the poor wretches (no, that’s not a good word, it lacks dignity and decency), the real people who were just going about their lives like you and me are on what was, until that point, just an ordinary day. Suddenly, out of the blue, ordinary human beings were being devoured by that unstoppable wave and we should try to empathise, try to put ourselves in their shoes instead of wallowing with an almost pornographic relish in the imagery.
There is a place for schadenfreude in the world, but this wasn’t it, and already the media is focussing away from the sensationalism of the images and moving on as if they have already tired of it and are seeking out the next big thing to tantalise and tease us with. That’s the thing with 24 hour rolling news, it chews you up, spits you out and moves along when it’s tired of you.
I came up here full of thoughts about nuclear reactors this morning, having spent much of the night brewing up many of my own observations which were rattling around my head as I heard about the new problems that were adding to the problems Japan was already suffering. With what I was hearing last night, I should be grateful that I’m still here and able to wake up at all. When I sat in my chair though, none of my opinions seemed important enough or informed enough to have any real meaning, and I would just have been wittering on again, pointlessly, and these really don’t feel like the times for that.
Normal service will be resumed, of course, because that’s what we human beings do when faced with the incomprehensible, and we’ll even find the time to laugh about things again soon. I’m sure that the internet is already buzzing with ‘jokes’ but don’t, whatever you do, send them to me.
Not today.
Today, like a sudden unexpected roar of laughter you hear when you’re attending a funeral, it would grate and seem just wrong.
* ‘Hell on Earth’ - http://bit.ly/hepJZz - 11/03/2011
* ‘Hell on Earth’ - http://bit.ly/hepJZz - 11/03/2011
Shocking photographs and now the nuclear explosion. We all watch and it's hard not to be 'entertained'. God help us, is all life a peep show?
ReplyDeleteYesterday a work colleague suggested this was karma - I was aghast at her flippant attitude, and gently tried to get her to see that no-one in this "had it coming to them", that it was (I hate to say the word 'just' here) a horrific but random act of nature.
ReplyDeleteI find it strange and dangerous how easy it is to perceive whole countries as single entities who deserve what they get, thinking nothing of all those thousands of innocent people who have had their lives irreversibly damaged by this - people who have no influence over the whims of leaders and certainly DID NOT deserve this.
To comment on your blog I too found myself hypnotised by the wave tearing over the farmland and polytunnels towards the town. I saw again and again the white car doing a seemingly ludicrous three point turn on a road quickly blocked either way by the wave - knowing that inevitably they were swept away too, though the camera spared us this.
I wonder if this voyeurism is a byproduct of too many ultra-realistic disaster films. Are we so bored with the safety of fiction now that we need our greed sated by real deaths?
How long before the ampitheatres return?
Amy K
Amy, thank you, as ever, for your thoughtful comment. I am of course tempted to get you to ask your colleague "Karma for what, exactly? What could anyone possibly have done to deserve that?" but I suspect from what you wrote that you already have. I also suspect that there were bigger issues at work in their mind there, somehow, but I don't know them, so I shouldn't say anything more.
ReplyDeleteHuman beings are strange creatures, really. We try to make sense of the nonsensical by believing that somehow we have influence and control over the power of nature. This is of course untrue, but if a human construct like "karma" or whatever helps someone to deal with something unimaginable and it helps them, then fair enough, I suppose... M.