But it is also okay to point out the psychological effect notoriety has, outside of the initial tragedy itself. For example, we might also ask "Why did everyone make such a big deal about the assasination of J.F.K? He wasn't the only one murdered that day?" Clearly there are other factors at work that, while in no way diminishing the tragedy of a loss of human life, entertwine and magnify the event in the eye of the public.
We see this same effect in the media with other events, such as the "shark epidemic" precedding 9/11, or more recently with all of the frenzy surrounding the abductions of children. In both of these cases, nothing had changed statistically about the frequency of such events (with kidnappings the trend has been downward), however a storm of morbid public fascination erupted in both cases through the medium of mass media. Despite the intense interest, the individual tragedies, whether they were hit with the spotlight or not, do not become any more or less tragic as a result.
When examining why our society, and human nature overall, is susceptible to these phenomena, we are foced to gaze into the mirror of our own deep-rooted psychology.
You want a real hand-wringer? Not too long ago I was visiting the killing fields, outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On display as a memorial there are thousands of bones of some of the victims of Pol Pot and the Kmer Rouge. As part of the display, amongst the mass graves and excavated skulls of men, women, and children, was a sign detailing many of the statistics of the massacres that took place, how many millions died, the brutal ways in which they were executed in front of their families, etc. Part of the text in this sign compared the horrors to that of those perpetrated by Nazi Germany, in a kind of "it was that bad" kind of way, and lamented how the world seems to have largely forgotten about it. This is true, regardless of how appropriate it is to point such a thing out.
Some of the other observers there were absolutely outraged that anyone would ever dare make such a comparison, that nothing would ever equal what the Nazi's did, etc.
I'm not sure which I found most disturbing. This business of one-upmanship on whose genocide was the worst is reprehensible. It's driven by how closely one relates to the horror of the tragedy, which is human psychology, but ignores the fact that every massacre is composed of individual human tragedies that must never be forgotten.
It is just as disingenuous to state "nothing is as bad as mine was" as it is to complain "why wasn't mine noticed."
The individual tradgedies are always there, always. Regardless of how much attention each and every death attracts in the public eye, nothing changes the fact that numbers, no matter how large, are made up of individuals. Every loss is significant.
Matt
In reply to Re^5: On September 11
by mojotoad
in thread On September 11
by scain
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