Random Quandary
Apr. 16th, 2003 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksSo I was walking along on my way to Greek, enjoying the nice spring weather and the blowing pink-and-white sakura and the fact that I am feeling enough better that I don't have to wear sixteen layers of clothing even though I still sound like a frog, and I dropped the book I am reading on the sidewalk. The book is a cultural history of nihilism and negationism, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus, which I have read several times before. It discusses many of the atrocities of the twentieth century as it explains the forces that drove many citizens into nihilist art and politics. The book bounced open as it fell, and landed, face-up, displaying a picture taken during the liberation of Belsen. I was running late, so I scooped it up and went on my way. But it has been bothering me ever since: here is this image, of death and horror and the lowest depths of the human spirit, which, when seen in context in the book, produces a reaction of pain/fear/pity/determination that this not happen again and all the other things that come when one contemplates a picture from the Holocaust. The use of the picture is fully justified in the book.
But what reaction occurs when one only sees this sort of image in passing? The book bounced open; I was late; I shut the book as if it were any image. If I had seen it in a window on the street, and not stopped, what emotional effect would it have on me? What emotional effect would it not have on me? Does seeing these images quickly in passing desensitize one, or is one's usual emotional reaction to this sort of thing actually a considered reaction, in which one has to allow the implications of the image to penetrate and think about them in order to be emotionally affected? What would it mean if the latter were true?
I felt obscurely guilty that the picture didn't bother me in this context, as I scooped the book up again. Where does that guilt come from? Would other people share it? Are we taught that we have to feel guilty if we do not take the time to feel pain on seeing even an image of others suffering, fifty years ago?
How would an occurrence like this affect the rest of you? Would it make you stop to consider the picture? Would you feel a sense of guilt if you didn't?
But what reaction occurs when one only sees this sort of image in passing? The book bounced open; I was late; I shut the book as if it were any image. If I had seen it in a window on the street, and not stopped, what emotional effect would it have on me? What emotional effect would it not have on me? Does seeing these images quickly in passing desensitize one, or is one's usual emotional reaction to this sort of thing actually a considered reaction, in which one has to allow the implications of the image to penetrate and think about them in order to be emotionally affected? What would it mean if the latter were true?
I felt obscurely guilty that the picture didn't bother me in this context, as I scooped the book up again. Where does that guilt come from? Would other people share it? Are we taught that we have to feel guilty if we do not take the time to feel pain on seeing even an image of others suffering, fifty years ago?
How would an occurrence like this affect the rest of you? Would it make you stop to consider the picture? Would you feel a sense of guilt if you didn't?
no subject
Date: 2003-04-19 08:41 am (UTC)I would have probably stopped for a moment and considered it, but even if I had just gone on my way, the thoughts would have been the same, I think. That God (and that is the one of the Christians) made the world, and made the suffering and horrors along with the beautiful. Even in moments of deepest sorrow, there is happiness, and even in moments of greatest joy, there is sorrow (thought I would have really just acknowledged that as the logical conclusion, not something usually personally experienced). Horror and evil happen, but so does great good and beauty. And then I would have smiled at and thanked God, and gone on my way and enjoyed the cherry blossoms.
Now?
I still think that there is the balance in the world, that there is joy and beauty in all that bad, and a touch of imperfection and sorrow in all that is happy and good. I think that human beings should never forget what we have done in the past so that we don't make the same mistakes again, but it should not be something to dwell on and agonize over again and again and again. I have a mild personal gripe about having a continued and agonizing pity party for the Holocaust in _every_single_K-12th grade class that mentioned that part of world history. We know it happened. We know that it was something that should not be repeated. We know that there were historical reasons for it, and that it all does make sense, and we condemn it as an evil deed. But do we need to emphazise over and over again the suffering? Oh well. That is not here or now, and here and now is cherry blossoms, and being late for class. Maybe I should hum that song from Cabaret ("Fatherland"). Nah, it is a library, and my voice will carry.
Sorry for the random switch into first person and present indicative. It just worked. And I don't think I would feel the sense of guilt because I've been mildly annoyed about that particular cultural guilt trip for some time now, and therefore have ceased (if I ever) feeling guilt over it.
-Ghost Cat