I listened to and interview with NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman (author of best-selling, The World is Flat) on the way to work this morning. He was discussing the dire problems in Iraq. During the interview he was grieving the losses that 9/11 brought to the sense of safety we Americans used to have. He talked about no longer being able to travel the world as an American without any worries as to safety. He mentioned how in DC one has to produce an ID to go into public buildings now. To underline these day/night changes in the last few years, he compared his experiences covering 5 years of the Lebanese civil war to what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. From his perspective, even in the atrocities of the Lebanese civil war, there were still lines of civility not crossed by the combatants. But now, there is no sense of “sanctuary”. Everyone is a target. A hospital to treat Muslims was blown up on the day it was being opened, a mosque was blown up during a funeral, school girls blown up during a test.
His comments made me pause. Is the world reaching some deeper level of depravity not seen before? Part of me wants to give a hearty yes. It seems worse. There seems to be a suicidal desire to destroy one’s own world and community for what appears to be nonsensical reasons.
But is it really worse now? I do not think so. What is true is that we see it much more quickly. We do not merely read about something that happened last week or last month, we read and see what happened this morning. And in that sense these stories tell us that we are not merely readers of world events but participants with possible power to do something about it. Further complicating matters is that the good guys v. bad guys mentality no longer works. The good guys (us?) aren’t so good; the bad guys have a point. Still further, it has brought some small changes to how we live (nothing compared to places like Israel where checkpoints have been common their whole existence). But we want to go back to a fantasy world where bad things do not happen. But they do happen and they have been happening for eons. Atrocities are not new. We are merely waking up to them.
Check out this depressing, and unfortunately incomplete, listing of genocides during my lifetime. You can read the full list of 2oth century genocides here but below are a few samples (with dates and estimated numbers dead): Sudan (50s-70s: 500,000), Guatemala (60s-90s: 200,000), Indonesia (65-66: 400,000), Uganda (72-29: 300,000; 79-86: 300,000), Vietnam (75-87; 430,000), Angola (75-02: 550,000), East Timor (75-99: 200,000), Iraq (79-03: 300,000), Kurdistan (80s-90s: 300,000), Liberia (90-?: 350,000), Somalia (91: 400,000). And this depressing list doesn’t include Yugoslavia, Zaire, Rwanda, the current crises in Sudan and Iraq, or the hidden deaths of trafficked persons.
The difference with these events is that they didn’t feel particularly close to our world. We didn’t have much interest or exposure and we felt little impact in our daily lives. But today, we sense the depravity and it reminds us how evil evil is. It exposes our desires for a fantasy world where is sin is indulging too much in chocolate and not the destruction of human life.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 
Susan Sontag wrote an impressive essay called “Regarding the Pain of Others,” on images of atrocities elsewhere in the world. Her significant insight is that seeing others’ suffering has little to do with compassion.
In the same way, Americans’ sense of unease, I believe has less to do with a feeling that the awful world out there has intruded into our space, and more to do with a sense that the world we live in is no longer intelligible. These two are related, but less directly.
Paul, you mean that seeing others’ pain doesn’t necessarily lead to compassion? Yes. I think that is a good point. I have heard others show from research that revealing the sufferings of others leads many to paralysis. Your second point makes sense too. However, because we lived in a fantasy just world that clearly is not really just, we have this unease because our world doesn’t work in the ways we wanted to believe it did (and did believe until this evil intruded in our own world).
You are right. Good point. I would add that the world is no more unsafe than before; it was only our facade that has fallen. The age of anxiety seems most pronounced among those facing the least trouble–those with secure incomes and safe neighborhoods. Compared with the poor, or with minorities, for whom insecurity is at least a little closer at hand, the middle classes seem to be more anxious.
This is a wonderful blog, by the way. I found you throught your comments on Ed Gilbreath’s site.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.