Thriving on Tragedy
Tom Wilson 10.09.04

Despite the fact that the Romanian media managed to, yet again, package a tragedy like the high-octane conclusion of a Russian Telenovela, it was impossible not to be moved by events in Beslan. At times like this, it is only natural for people to want to come together in their grief, to try to come to some kind of collective understanding of what took place. It is precisely such times when people are most susceptible to emotional manipulation for political ends. This is exactly what is happening in the aftermath of the tragedy.

In recent years we've seen an obvious trend for the desire to express private sentiments in a public way. The colour-coded ribbons that really took off in the nineties (red for AIDS, pink for breast cancer, etc. etc.) hinted that being seen to care about something had almost become as important as the caring itself. However, people have also displayed a powerful urge to come together in a very public way during times of tragedy. The otherwise forgettable death of Princess Diana in 1997 was memorable for the spectacle that followed, with people queuing for days and travelling from abroad to grieve in public. Displays of solidarity after 9/11 and the demonstrations in Spain after the Madrid bombings are other examples. These aren't political demonstrations of the usual kind - the role they play is much more emotional, their focus fuzzy or non-existent. This isn't politics - it's group therapy.

What we're seeing isn't merely the continuation of an age-old human need to share a burden during times of suffering. It tells us something much more important about the way we cope in modern societies.

The world today is an inescapably unfair place to live in. Take a look at the clothes and shoes that you're wearing right now and you can be sure that at least one item was made by child labour in a third world country. Think of everything you consume each day - everything from flowers to jewellery to petrol to food - and you'll quickly realise that most of the choices you make involve transporting vast quantities of goods from a hole on one side of the world only to end up in another hole in the ground somewhere else - usually at great human and environmental cost.

Moreover, there are a million things happening all around you that you could try to make a little bit better, but choose not to. Look outside and you'll see visible reminders of things we could actually do something about, whether it's homelessness or people being unable to afford medicines. Coping with this burden - the immorality of our day-to-day lives - involves suppressing powerful emotional responses on a daily basis. It's not surprising then that most people end up feeling fairly alienated from their own sense of humanity.

This is precisely why modern society thrives on tragedy. Events like Beslan release the floodgates of emotion. Our repressed sense of justice comes bubbling to the surface, and for once, as a society, as a communal unit, we are able to feel human. Tragedy provides a transfusion of morality in these amoral times.

In the emotional fervour, we forget to ask the real questions. The tens of thousands of Russians who took to the streets on Tuesday were intoxicated by the re-discovery of their ability to empathise. By protesting against something as patently ephemeral as 'Global Terrorism', they deprived their demonstration of any substance beyond emotional catharsis. They might as well have been campaigning against The Bogeyman.

As Putin's response to the massacre unfolds in the coming weeks, you can bet that this heightened emotional state is something he'll be taking full advantage of. His solution will almost certainly involve more authoritarianism and centralisation, both in Chechnya and Russia itself. And the losers will be precisely the ordinary people whose genuine beneficence drove them out onto the streets.

© Tom Wilson / ZF 2004