Kevin's Watch

A senseless mass killing of gay people enjoying a night out in a club, a mass shooting of kids in a school, a bomb strategically placed in a Bhagdad square.........

And on it goes. And on and on ........

And none of these things affect me -except they do........ because like a war weary veteran (dear God forgive me) I find myself empathetically exhausted. The sight of dead children being carried up Greek beaches, shell-shocked people gathering outside French restaurants and photos of men on their knees about to be beheaded no longer cause in me the shocked sense of anger, the howl of outrage at the plight of my fellow man, that they should. Rather I get a sense of disconnection, a tiredness as well, an emotional grey sheet where my normal human feelings should be.

How has this happened. I love my fellow man: i care that people hurt, that their lives go belly up. Thus have I become a vile thing in my own eyes, for my abjecct failure to be able to keep on, to keep on summoning up the appropriate level of horror at the things people do.

Sounds to me like you need to take a couple of these, dude



and drop into Mallory's once in a while.

Rune wrote:Sounds to me like you need to take a couple of these, dude



and drop into Mallory's once in a while.

What's Mallory's - a game site? Sorry Rune, don't think that's going to cut it somehow. (But don't think I don't understand your good intentions my friend and gratitude for that ).

[See my name: I will lick 'em by smileing!]

Mallory's is a forum here on the Watch: The Waymeet -> Forum Games -> In Pursuit of Mallory.

I hear what you're saying, though, peter. We certainly can get to a point where all the horrible things start to run together and you just sort of go numb to it all. I've been there myself.

You've been a member for 7 years and you don't know what Mallorys is? Wow. Well done.

There's a reason we get desensitised to stuff like this...you can't function under the burden of constant pressure.

If it's not affecting you directly, you can't maintain that stress/grief/outrage/whatever indefinitely.

It's a widespread phenomenon here in SA. Surrounded by near constant stories of tragedy, crime and violence, we've become singularly insensitive to it.

--A

peter wrote: A senseless mass killing of gay people enjoying a night out in a club, a mass shooting of kids in a school, a bomb strategically placed in a Bhagdad square.........

And on it goes. And on and on ........

And none of these things affect me -except they do........ because like a war weary veteran (dear God forgive me) I find myself empathetically exhausted. The sight of dead children being carried up Greek beaches, shell-shocked people gathering outside French restaurants and photos of men on their knees about to be beheaded no longer cause in me the shocked sense of anger, the howl of outrage at the plight of my fellow man, that they should. Rather I get a sense of disconnection, a tiredness as well, an emotional grey sheet where my normal human feelings should be.

How has this happened. I love my fellow man: i care that people hurt, that their lives go belly up. Thus have I become a vile thing in my own eyes, for my abjecct failure to be able to keep on, to keep on summoning up the appropriate level of horror at the things people do.

To be honest peter, I actually thought you might be echoing an earlier post I'd made in Gen/Disc - Link
The reason I no longer have any interest in current affairs, local, home, or abroad, is simply the way they make me feel. Depressed.

I thought it would be patronizing of me to suggest that if news is making you feel vile, and you don't like feeling vile, then you can always do something about it.
Besides, it's not like you're in the thick of it. Foreign wars and such like, are not in the neighbourhood, and could be kept at their appropriate distance.

Back in the Seventies, in Harlem New York City USA, the junkies were in so much need of their supply of drugs they would take out house insurance then burn down their house for the payments. In doing so they reduced their neighbourhood to a war zone.
This happens to be the only way I can explain to myself, in order to understand, why my neighbourhood back in Scotland in the 80's was systematically, over a period of two or so years, slowly burned to the ground. At the time there just didn't seem to be any reason for it, other than mindless vandalism.
The cost of repairs was too much for the Council and the land was sold to a private housing concern and they bulldozed the estate.
I visited the place a couple of years later. Their were several buildings still standing, like gravestones, in an otherwise barren field.
That's as close to being a refugee that I have been.
God forbid what it must be like to be bombed out of a neighbourhood, and harrowed from one's own country. Personnal experieces are more than enough for me.

Sorry Rune - I should have made myself clear. My post absolutely was a continuation of the theme of your earlier post, but turned to my own perspective. I sort of understand the reasons why this happens as Av outlines above, but I have always placed a high value on my humanity and am indeed bothered by any sense of its being lessened.

But am I become dispicable in my own eyes - well perhaps that little bit, but rest assured, the remainder of me is still pretty damn good .

Gosh - that's quite a chilling tale about your neighbourhood being raised over a period Rune. That would not be nice and yes, extended and amplified into a war situation..........

This is my point. If images pouring out the TV are starting to stink like sewage, turn the bloody thing off. Or better still, stick yer boot through it and bin the damn thing. But hey, that's just me.

I'm reminded of the immemorial lines of Pink Floyd's (Outside) The Wall.

All alone, or in two's,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.

And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

"Isn't this where...."

I watch very little TV - the odd news program and some science/art stuff, but working in a 'convenience store' I get daily exposure to all of the front-pages while I pack or unpack the papers. The thing is when you see all the headlines every day, the patterns start to emerge and you see how the media is used to manipulate and prod public thinking in whatever direction the powers that be will. [nb This very observation was arrived at long before I myself independently noticed it, by Alan Moore in the Watchmen graphic novel, where a street newspaper vendor states that if you want to know what's really going on you should ask a newspaper seller.] The effectiveness of the strategies are again evidenced by the thousand or so customers I serve a day expressing those very concerns, views or indulging in the moral panics that I have seen served up by the print media over the previous days. Take the current immigrant fears, stoked by the right wing media in the safe knowledge that they will translate into 'out' votes in the forthcoming referendum: this is just the most overt example of how the press is used to influence everything from which medications we take to how we spend or invest our money.

One thing that is pertinent in my case - although I cannot sever my exposure to the events of the world by virtue of the job I do, I am better prepared to spot the tricks used to herd us than most and thus less likely to be duped by them. [ ]

peter wrote:...I have always placed a high value on my humanity and am indeed bothered by any sense of its being lessened...

Y'know, it's only in relatively recent years that have even had the luxury of feeling like this. For by far the majority of human history, we've known life to be all too nasty, brutish and short, as Hobbes said.

And in a lot of places, it still is.

--A

Examples that buck that trend can be found in the strangest of places, and provide an enduring lesson in the essential goodness of people at their core level. Yes, they can become brutalised all to easily by unremitting exposure to suffering [their own as much as others] ..... but it's not the whole story. Look for example at the case of the people in occupied Denmark in WW2, who almost to a man just began to operate a policy of passive nom-cooperation with the Nazi occupiers. Bizarrely, apparently even the Nazis' themselves, once removed from the ocean of madness which mainland Europe had by and large become, also started to see the situation with different eyes and began to stall and dissimulate in the exportation of people to the camps.

And on that tangent, thank heavens it's all well and truly behind us.

Rune wrote:And on that tangent, thank heavens it's all well and truly behind us.

Do not rejoice in his defeat you men, because although the world has stood up and stopped the bastard the bitch that bore him is in heat again (Bertold Brecht).

Well, y'see, it goes to my contention that as individuals, most people are decent enough. Groups though...well, groups are just mobs who haven't motivated themselves sufficiently yet...

--A

peter wrote:Do not rejoice in his defeat you men, because although the world has stood up and stopped the bastard the bitch that bore him is in heat again (Bertold Brecht).

Are you sure it wasn't Antonius Proximo who'd said that in Gladiator !

Anyways, thanks for the thread peter.