This old man, he played seven; He played knick-knack up in heaven. - Nursery Rhyme
It's hard to believe the September 11 attacks happened almost 8 years ago, and Hurricane Katrina, 4 years ago. It's interesting to note that both were weapons of mass destruction, the second was groundbreaking in that we witnessed the wrecking of a modern city. One might say that the weapons of mass destruction in New York and Washington were at the hands of man, and that Katrina was a natural event. Or one might argue that both were anthropomorphic. But that's not precisely what I want to examine here. What I want to examine is our voyeurism versus our involvement.
Earlier today I posted two videos of the 9/11 tragedy. Both take a long time to watch, and I doubt whether most people who visit this blog either have the time or the stomach for it. Even so, if you are reading this, I recommend you take some time out of your busy schedule to reflect.
They're attacking the World Trade Centre, not us.
The quality of one of the videos is particularly high, giving the material a very high degree of realism, of being there. It starts off with the peculiar accompaniment of children's music echoing faintly in the background. And although the scene is unfolding, the person behind the camera is fairly composed, uttering a few required 'Oh my God's' and trying to figure out what happened and whether any fire engines were turning up. There is no sense of understanding that while the pictures are unfolding, people are dying, burning, jumping to their deaths. The impression you get is they are simply watching a tall building on a fire.
So what I found peculiar but hardly surprising was the lack of involvement in the scene unfolding in front of them. They weren't connected to it. The calm voices calmly speculating while the inferno engulfs the building - as though commenting on a movie. You only get an immediate sense of concern when the buildings collapse, and especially when huge plumes of dust advance of their location [about 500 yards from the Twin Towers]. Even after the buildings have collapsed there is little sense of awareness that hundreds of people have just lost their lives. The attention is so haphazard in fact that they fail to capture the second plane crashing into the towers, and miss the collapse of the first tower. Well, nobody's perfect, and the point of this piece isn't to nitpick but to ask: how involved are we in what's happening outside, beyond our windows? Do we respond after the event, or can we anticipate and imagine the reality before the inevitable? Can we see the situation of others, or are we mostly focused on our own safety?
During the aftermath, when the dusty remains of the twin towers engulf all the buildings around them, someone comments about "Oh, this is what it must be like to live in the Middle East? We're so lucky not to live in that situation." And of course, whose bombs were they in that foreign country? Did that not say something towards why the attack on New York happened? That one atrocity invites another?
Look at all the ashes, it looks like it's snowing.
From a purely humanitarian perspective, it is troubling to see how disconnected and voyeuristic we are in terms of our own immediate realities. Something 500 yards away might as well be on TV, or a movie. It is only when the dust approaches the window that there is an immediate sense of connection, of urgency, of being involved in a present reality.
In another sense, I have noticed how people in my community are very aware of how accountable one is in terms of money, and debts. It's very specific, very clear. Yet when it comes to manners, and being accountable to each other as human beings, its one big gray area. It's an endless back on forth on who is to blame and whether an apology is really necessary. It's the politics of expedience, and ego. It's a pity we aren't able to apply our approach to accounting to our manners. Because it is really when we start to lose our manners that we start to say farewell to civilisation. You might think that is an exaggeration, but someone once said: "Civilisation started when someone hurled an insult instead of a rock." It ends, when the insults hurt enough,and we are stressed enough, that we collectively clench our fists and reach for the rock again. Unless by some miracle we find our manners, and we get involved in what is happening, that time is coming, if it isn't already upon us.
Did you see the movie, On the beach?
No, I'm glad I didn't [see it].
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