The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School has focused everyone's attention on things like gun laws and mental illness. The sheer number of deaths and the age of the victims is almost too much to bear. What I find quite interesting is how people in different circumstances react to this kind of thing.
In countries that see the USA as an enemy it was not so much as a tragedy as an inevitable consequence of the enemies actions and a manifestation of the sick American psyche. Other mass deaths become statistics. Only the family and friends of the dead will mourn. The rest of us will see the number and possibly "tut tut".
Reading News24.com this morning I came across this heading. 765 Killed on SA roads this month. Probably none of these deaths made the headlines on their own. Usually it takes "a major fatal crash" where five or more people lose their lives in a single accident to make it newsworthy. According to statistics about 1500 people will be murdered in SA during December. How many of those have and will be reported in the major media?
How many Facebook prayers will circulate for the victims of a wedding blown up by a nutcase who disagrees with the participants religious interpretations? I could go on and on with these types of examples, but I hope I have made my point.
It is sad that some killings make the headlines, garner sympathy for survivors from around the world while others don't even make the news. We never get to know about them. The ones we do get to know about are generally just numbers. We never get to know a name or a back story. If the person being killed is thought to be an enemy there might even be rejoicing.
So what's the point of all of this? It certainly isn't to diminish those tragic deaths in Sandy Hook, but to hope that humankind would get to the point that any needless death becomes a tragedy and garners our combined energies to try to prevent any further such deaths. This week the hope. Next week? Probably more hope.
'Til next post...
No comments:
Post a Comment