Paul Crowley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ciphergoth) wrote2005-07-14 12:05 pm
ciphergoth) wrote2005-07-14 12:05 pm
Two minute silence
At 12:00 BST today, London and many around the world observed a two minute silence for the 48 people who died in the terrorist attacks on London on 7 July.
During those two minutes, approximately 42 children worldwide died due to poverty.
We are not going to let terrorists cause us to lose perspective.
During those two minutes, approximately 42 children worldwide died due to poverty.
We are not going to let terrorists cause us to lose perspective.
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If the world as a whole felt more empathy, however, that would perhaps lead to some problems being fixed. Or at least no longer ignored or having to be made into a trendy cause which most forget about when the next trendy cause comes along.
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I strongly feel that the right approach to atrocity is to treat all of them the same way. 9/11: Incapacitating emotional pain. Bombs in London: Incapacitating emotional pain. Invasion of Iraq: Incapacitating emotional pain. Darfur: Incapacitating emotional pain. Either that or callous apathy and business as usual in every case. But all the same, because human suffering is all the same.
If that means that the entire Western population cowers in bed unable to face the World, well, that in itself would solve a lot of problems. We wouldn't be invading other countries, for instance. More realistically, if we feel such debilitating pain every time there is a comparable atrocity anywhere we would swiftly put these issues at the top of our collective priorities and solve them. We could solve them quite easily if there was any priority put to doing so.
What I have an issue with is feeling terrible gut-wrenching pain when your own countrypeople suffer relatively minor attacks but at the same time merely registering mild sympathy to foreigners suffering extended casualties. I think no politician is ever going to put priority on fixing world problems while their constituency has this double standard.
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We agree that the correct approach to atrocity is to treat them all in the same way and that a response to human suffering of one's own country/countries should be the same as the response to human suffering in other countries. What we disagree about is what that treatment should be. I don't feel that incapacitating emotional pain would be helpful; it would only lead to apathetic and hopeless anger. Deep empathy on a mass scale however, breeds a very different type of anger which I feel would indeed lead to the issues of atrocity and what causes them to occur being put on the top of our collective priorities and being solved.