Slouching towards cynicism

War. Famine. Mass shootings. Hate speech. All of these lend themselves to an unfortunate result: a sense of ennui wrapped in a lack of empathy.

I am old enough to have watched the war in Vietnam as it was unfolding. Newscasters on commercial television, all three channels, made a point of offering the body count for the day. The emphasis seemed to be on how we must be winning if we killed more North Vietnamese soldiers than they killed ours. What a macabre measure of success, duplicated time and again as one political entity has led incursions on another.

The rarity of something increases its value. With the declaration of the world having reached a population of 8 billion, one of the outcomes might be that human life is perceived as cheap. Yes, we mourn those we lose who we feel close to, but there are other catastrophes that are mentioned briefly and then forgotten. How do we maintain a connection with humanity after being bombarded with how others treat it with so little value?

British literature from the 1800’s that depicted crime offered a reaction to someone losing a life with a crowd’s reaction being one of “Murder, murder most foul!”. The population would be aghast that one person would take the life of another. Of course, this was also the home of a court system that would hang a juvenile offender for thievery. Britain eventually used the exportation of its lower caste as a way of handling its overpopulation, the result being the establishment of Australia. Now there is very little space for such a solution.

Awareness of existing catastrophes can be blunted by our separation from it by various media, including radio and television. Events happen “out there”, offered to us by a speaker and a picture on a screen. It is important information, but it is several steps away from our direct experience. Pictures of bodies are offered with a disclaimer that “Some viewers may find these images disturbing”, but there are rarely names that come with these images. One woman in Yemen, unnamed, bitterly complained that “They come and take their pictures and then they leave. What good Is that to us?”. Perhaps the pictures lead to people financially supporting rescue efforts, but that still includes a certain level of separation.

All those who die have had a life, however brief or long. They were all somebody’s child, perhaps full of promise, perhaps not. People who die in air show accidents probably all had families. Warplanes shot down by another country had people inside who had their own histories and loved ones.

How others are perceived can make murder an easier prospect. If you are part of a culture that does not value women, it’s OK to put a burning tire around a woman’s neck or decapitate her for protesting her oppressed condition. If somebody claims an identity that you don’t like, it’s OK to throw them off a building. If somebody says something you don’t like on social media, simply suggest that they don’t deserve to live. Never mind that those people might have offered value to themselves and the people they cared about. Their life is cheap.

And we are surrounded by firearms which, in their lethality, can make it relatively easy to take another person’s life. If you feel disrespected, just take the other person out; to hell with dialogue with the possibility of reconciliation.

There are no easy answers for changing this dynamic, but perhaps it would help to make the effort to keep in mind that the “deceased” had names. Maybe then they can be unique and appreciated and, for a moment, we can honor their passing.