War and Peace

Telling information is coming out of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. It seems that a recent study by the organization finds that 28% of American internet users (a sample equating to some 30 million adults) "actively sought...out" graphic war images online. However, 49% of those surveyed objected to having the content posted (note).

Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?

When a man, a real man, has his head sawn off barbarically, there is a look of shock and pain and fear and disbelief that flickers across his face that, even captured on grainy video, is absolutely unmistakable. Most Americans, though, have contact with the feral only vicariously - through Arnold and his cadre of Hollywood killers. However, no matter how good the actors in a movie are, the blood is not real. The pain is not real. The death is not real. They know it and we see it. What we seek, I think, is the thrill of the kill. But not a real kill. We just want the death visual that stimulates the chemical outflow that makes us remember we're still alive.

When it's real, though. Forget it.

Humans, beautiful as we are, feel compassion (well, most of us, anyway). We put ourselves in another's place. We sympathize. We empathize. We knelt on that sweating floor in that dusty back room with the stinking warriors behind us. We felt the steel on our necks. We had our hair pulled back. We died in a grisly and painful way that day.

A few years ago I saw video of a Russian soldier killed by a Chechen as they shared a cigarette. When I saw that, my mind expanded a little bit. I realized that death walked with these people. It wasn't foreign and hushed as it is here in the 'burbs. It screams and splatters! How very different we are. How very fortunate we are to be living in relative peace and comfort.

But are we?

I happen to think that the publishing of ghastly war images on the internet serves two major purposes in converging humanity (especially out here in the 'burbs):

1. It shows all of us, unmistakably, the personal horrors of war.
2. It helps to teach us that there is a gap between out thoughts of war, and war itself. War is bloody, selfish, personal, and barbaric. It's not merely a 120-minute accompaniment to polishing off a bag of popcorn.

Some of the people I have talked to about these images say they make them angry. They want revenge. They want to hold the knife next time.

I want to shift the tide next time.