spirit
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Re: Excuse me?
Jun 21, 2002, 09:18
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I think that's probably true about family being more important than self - but might it not also have something to do with closer and more frequent acquaintance with death than that in the West. My view is that in the West people are very sheltered from death - it happens but generally we have very low infant mortality and relatively low mortality at all ages compared with the countries under discussion. Hence we have a sort of reverence for death - it isn't a commonplace.
In the cultures under discussion isn't death much closer - partly due to large extended families which means that ther is a bigger pool of people you are close to - there is higher infant mortality - the point being that people are much more used to death and less shocked by it than we are (inured maybe). May be that if you think you aren't going to live that long anyway going out in a blaze of glory doesn't seem such an abhorrent idea.
It's the only way I can get even (not very) close to why people might do this.
xx spirit
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Merrick
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Re: Excuse me?
Jun 23, 2002, 17:53
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Wow, I'd not thought of that idea, spirit. It certainly rings true.
My friend Mahalia suggested that the reason the West so loves violent movies is that we cannot deal with death. So we want it in our faces, graphically and luridly and without real consequence, to make us feel it doesn't really matter and only happens to bad guys. Another reason why we can't get our heads round being a suicide bomber.
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FourWinds
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Re: Excuse me?
Jun 24, 2002, 09:37
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It is quite an interesting idea and one that certainly needs to be considered.
Thinking cap on ....
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AgentOrange
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Wierdo west
Jun 24, 2002, 14:00
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I think you've got something there, Merrick. I sometimes think that people don't live in the world. When you mention nuclear war in the indian subcontinent, they say 'it'll never happen'. They can watch programmes about medieval torture and the holocaust because they can't imagine such violence ever happening in their reality. In the west we encounter violence and death so rarely we don't really beleive in it. Sick.
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FourWinds
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About turn ....
Jun 24, 2002, 14:25
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Sorry, but haven't you got your point the opposite way around to everyone else?
Spirit spoke of high mortality rates in the middle east/Asia/Africa giving them a more rleaxed attitude to death, because it's a fact of life to them, whereas in the west with all our money and medicines death is an uncommon beast.
One point I thought good was of the extended family. I know that when my gran was alive we had a very large community feeling in our family but when she passed on we lost that - she was the bond it would seem.
I know I am quite insular as far as that is concerned and like many people I hear of the odd relative dying every now and then but it tends to mean little to me because I am one level removed from them. I certainly do not hear of 1 in 4 children dying before they are 5 years old.
At the moment in Pallestine people don't no when an airstrike is going to blow their house up or when a bulldozer is coing through the front wall, so perhaps there is an element of "if I'm going to die anyway then I might as well take a few of them with me!"
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spirit
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Re: About turn ....
Jun 24, 2002, 15:18
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and it might also be about exercising control/power. If you feel your life is under threat whether from poverty and its attendants or airstrikes or military brutality isn't there possibly a view that you can take some control of the situation by saying I'm going out in the time and manner of my choosing - (and I'll take a few of my perceived oppressors with me)
its a bit like someone undergoing chemotherapy shaving their head before the drugs make their hair fall out (though obviously this is less drastic) - the end result is the same but they have exercised their will rather than waited passively ...
xx spirit
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AgentOrange
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Re: About turn ....
Jun 24, 2002, 16:26
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have i? I was trying to express how, since the the west we experience violence and death so rarely, that we cant beleive that it can happen to us. Thus violence and death can be pure entertainment, because it is meaningless. having said all that, some of the most violent stories come from very violent times. so maybe I did get it wrong...
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FourWinds
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Re: About turn ....
Jun 24, 2002, 17:00
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AH! No, I just read it wrong ... very tired after 20 hour stone trip yesterday and probably inserted not only my own punctuation but words too :-)
If that's what you said then your spot on.
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FourWinds
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tired
Jun 24, 2002, 17:01
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>> your spot on
erm ... you're spot on
ahem.
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Lord Lucan
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Back to Cherie
Jun 25, 2002, 10:36
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Being surrounded by death and destruction will make people more inclined to see their own lives as expendable. Lives end up being the currency of war. But I'd like to bring it back to Cherie's admittedley ill-timed comment. Desperate people with no sense of a worthwhile future and a great sense of injustice will take desperate measures. Let's also not forget the actions of some of the suffragettes. Now, that's what oppression and the lack of a voice can produce. Palestinians feel that the world (or at least the powerful West) is not listening to them. There comes a time when people whose protestations aren't being listened to will raise their voices to a scream.
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