Equivocality

The government is killing people and systematically blacking out all information.

Right now.

I am toying with the idea of taking this as a personal insult. I am trying to figure out if there’s anything to be gained by encouraging myself to consider such problems on a day-to-day basis. I am wondering exactly how big my sphere of give-a-shit is, or should be.

I’ve seen enough of the world now to understand that this is real. I can see it in my head; I can imagine the panic of the first shots as the soldiers start firing into the crowd, the crush of bodies, and the deeply disturbing indifference of the troops who are even now killing foreign photographers. I can feel the rage and denial of watching your girlfriend fall and being forced to leave her as you run.

When I play through these scenes, there is some part of me screaming. To be honest, I’m glad for that part. It feels like the beginning of comprehension. It’s the only hold I’ve got on something so far out of my experience, it might as well not exist in my universe.

These days of the Burmese are lost to me. There’s really nothing I can do at this point. There is only the future, and a question I find myself asking.

I need to know just what, if anything, this has to do with me.

This is not an abstract question. This is not about idealistic notions of the bonds between all human beings. This is not about guilt or responsibility; I’m not sure I really believe in either of those concepts. This is about me wondering whether I would have to change my behavior if I were to truly accept the reality of these events, and others like them — and if so, in what way?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 2:54 am and is filed under Blog-like. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.