Charlie Hebdo happened.
I'm not interested in the issues of freedom of speech, religious
tolerance, global politics or all that stuff that's been reposted from
every conceivable angle so many times that I want to tear my own face
off; rather, I'm interested in death.
12 people died in the
attack, another half a dozen in the ensuing chase. A massacre, by any
definition. Think of those innocent people, promising young lives cut
short by acts of senseless violence. Think of their families and
their destroyed lives. What should we do about it?
We should ignore it.
Here's a challenge for
everyone: next time there's a bloody tragedy, don't post about it.
Unless you personally knew the victims, don't read news articles
about it. Definitely don't read opinion pieces about it. Avoid
conversations about it to the extent you can. Pretend the story
contains spoilers from upcoming Game of Thrones episodes.
“How unbelievably
crass and awful!” I hear you cry. “We should honour and remember
innocent victims so that their loss wasn't in vain.”
And yet, I'm virtually
certain, anyone making this objection doesn't do that. Almost no one
in our society honours and remembers innocent victims of terrible
massacres. OK, you honoured and remembered Charlie Hebdo, maybe you
remembered the victims of flight MH370, heck, you definitely still
remember 9/11. If you're politically attentive, you might have
noticed and felt sorry for the victims of Boko Haram in recent weeks.
But you probably forgot
about the many hundreds who died in the insurgency in Iraq in 2015
alone. The 144 people who died in Northwest Pakistan may have slipped
your mind. More than a hundred in the Libyan Civil War. 52 in
Somalia. 30 in the Mexican drug wars. All in the last few weeks. Not
to mention Syria, Darfur, Palestine and dozens of other locations.
I definitely don't want
to guilt trip anyone. I didn't know about any of these until I looked
them up just now. The point is, we don't keep track of horrible
massacres because we couldn't possibly. There are too many. We also
don't mourn the thousands who die from horrible diseases every day,
despite them being just as tragic and impactful for the victims.
To my mind, caring
about the death of certain people when you so blatantly don't care
about the death of most is somewhat thoughtless. When the ones you
care about are the same race and religion as you, it becomes even
more suspect.
If you choose to give
your attention, opinions and solidarity rallies to a certain Death
Event, you've got ask yourself what it will achieve. In the case of
Iraq and Pakistan and the rest, it won't achieve much because we have
very little power to do anything about those conflicts.
If you think it's
different for Charlie Hebdo, ask yourself this: how would the world
be different now if no one had ever heard of the attacks other than
personal acquaintances of the deceased? If anything, the world would
be better, right? There'd be tiny bit less threat to freedom of
speech, and a tiny bit better relations between the Christian and
Muslim worlds.
Did the massive parade
convince anyone not to bow to the terrorists' whims? Of course not.
No one was contemplating bowing. Did it help to improve the West's
policies towards radical Islam? Nope. Was it even trying to? Not
really.
The dead don't need our
honour or remembrance. Frankly, if I died and could magically have an
opinion on the matter, I would find the mourning of people who didn't
ever know me to be highly patronising. I'd hope to be remembered by
my friends and loved ones, but it would be insane, not to mention
arrogant, to expect any more. Doesn't matter if I have a random heart
attack or if I was blown up in a children's hospital.
If you have to mourn
something, and clearly there's a lot in the world to mourn, then
mourn the statistics. Focus your emotions and actions towards graphs
and spreadsheets. Do whatever it takes to get those numbers ticking
in the right direction. The survivors need more help than the
victims.
Don't mourn the dead
you never knew. In almost every case of random violence, it does more
good to forget than remember.
