where were you/what were you doing/what were you feeling/when?

[sabotabby]

It's perversely fascinating reading LJ several days after a tragic newsworthy event. Most people on my friends list, for example, are aware at some level that 35,000 children die every day from preventable diseases, and this is a tragedy, but none of us blog every day about the 35,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases. It's usually the unexpected mass deaths that fire up the collective imagination.

Well, we don't know those children. But most of us don't know anyone who went to Virginia Tech either, but a lot of us are overwhelmingly upset and touched by the lives and deaths of people we never met. I'm disinclined to say anything cynical about that; I mean, I have that same reaction. (And check out the spike in the numbers of LJers who were "sad" or "shocked" over the past few days.)

At any rate, I have a theory that a lot of us react to high-profile tragedies in bizarre ways that we tend not to talk about. Accordingly, a poll:


[Poll #969519]

Comments

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

I read almost everything I could get ahold of. The reason I didn't blog about is because of my hardboiled credo on life: "Be a precious flower. But keep it inside. Keep it inside. Keep it...inside."

Feelings aside, I kept thinking about how many people die like this in a senseless hail of violence everyday in Iraq and everywhere else. Yesterday four people were killed here in Gotham, and the shooter then shot himself. Despite the similarities to VA Tech incident, it was a blip on the newsradar, and no one in the national media made a connection to how often this happens. I guess they were afraid to trivialize the tragedy by drawing our attention away.

The more I think about it the more I realize that the newsmedia makes a fetish out of grief. They don't focus on important stuff; they focus on "feelings." They hunt on the grief of survivors like emotional vultures. They are sending a signal to everyone to be ready to say something about their feelings. It doesn't surprise me in the least that many of those feelings came bleeding out on LJ. But I dunno how much it helps you cope with grief to make a blog post. It probably makes things worse to talk feelings with strangers, who cannot do anything to help you cope with them.

Traditional news media, by treating this event as an isolated spasm of violence, makes things worse. Fact of the matter is, there were roughly 40 school shootings last year around the world. More than 30 took place in the US. What we need is anger, not sadness. Constructive emotion is anger. Sadness is almost always destructive.

But, then again, what do I know.

[sabotabby]

"Be a precious flower. But keep it inside. Keep it inside. Keep it...inside."

This is usually my intent. But it never works out that way.

I am in favour of constructive anger, myself. I alternate between hopeless depression and righteous indignation, interspersed with rare moments of joy. It's a hard way to be, though.