Un-Comfortably Numb

This blog idea came to mind after the latest in London violence when two men viciously attacked another young man in broad daylight. I’m sure you all know the crime to which i'm referring as you've been bombarded with images, opinions, articles and reports since it happened. This attack was indeed a tragedy but what struck me, worse than the crime's savage nature, was my reaction. I suffered a complete lack of shock and subsequent guilt over this absent emotion. Immediately all these questions filled my mind, 

"Is there something wrong with me?" 

"Am I completely void of emotion?"

"Don’t I care???"

My god, I once cried when a bunch of kids (I don’t even know) won a reality talent show!

I was really beating myself up about this, until a week later when I opened the paper on the train. Instantly I noticed how hell-bent today’s media was on using the victim as a pawn to extract reactions from the public. It wasn't enough that this young man had to die, we had to know who he was, what he had achieved, hear from his family, his friends, his past school mates, past teachers, what his child’s name is and how bright his future could have been. 

Do we really need to know all this? 

I looked up and saw his face smiling back at me from a dozen other newspapers. Next to me a man wiped his croissant crumbs over pictures of the gruesome crime scene while tucking into his breakfast as if he were reading his star sign. Another commuter was using his mother's agony stricken face as a temporary make up table. 

That’s when I knew I wasn't alone. 

Are we becoming as familiar to violence as we are to train delays?

Have we become so desensitised towards it that reporters need to troll through the victims past in the hope something will strike a nerve with the public and result in a reaction? 

The victim’s body was only slightly blurred in one of the photographs, where once it would have been blacked out. The attacker still held the weapon which dripped with fresh blood yet a woman still continued to apply her mascara, heads still bopped to music and the man next to me finished his croissant. I remember a time when video tapes used alert us to "Menace and Peril", now you can watch Saddam's hanging on YouTube.

The media knows that real news doesn't affect us as much as celebrity turmoil and X-Factor results, which is why, I suppose, they print such images. They want us to know he was a Dad and a musician but above all they want us to know he was just a young man minding his own business. In other words, that it could have been any one of you. And if they cant strike pain from readers they might strike fear.  

My Mother likes to say “there was none of this in my day, people could leave their doors unlocked and walk home alone at night”. 

Is this true, or were dangers always present but not publicised because there was no Sky News report?

Its only now 70 and 80 year old men are being sentenced for attacks they carried out in their younger years. And let’s not mention the church! The public were just more protected from violence in her day and in a way i'm almost jealous. 

Maybe my Mother would have cried upon seeing these images at my age. 

While I no longer believe it is just me who “fails to feel”, I am worried we will become a world so emotionally vacant to violence that our own lines between right and wrong may blur. 

But I guess there is nothing we can do but to accept this fate and switch on Sky News for the next breaking news report.