I was
brought-up to look away.
Not to
stare at people who are different.
I don’t
slow down and gawp at road traffic accidents or watch paramedics tending to
people on the pavement.
To do that
isn’t kind or necessary or right.
My response
to people in pain shouts aloud (in a discreet whisper, of course) the values by
which I was brought-up. It’s not that I don’t
care or that I don’t have the stomach to see people suffering, it’s simply that
I am English and middle-aged. We believe that people deserve their dignity,
most especially when they are vulnerable or in distress.
Yet, in the past couple of years, on the Facebook pages of
friends, I have seen severed heads. I have seen the smouldering bodies of those
who have been burned alive. Girls who have been raped, murdered and left hanging
from trees. Blast victims from bombings. Fatal exit wounds from gunshots.
Those appalling images
can be cleared from my view at the click of a mouse. And I can be angry for the
moment that ‘friends’ have published such graphic images on their pages where I
(and others, including children) will see them. For surely the victims of such
barbaric acts deserve the dignity in their deaths that was denied them in life?
And surely I, living in Pleasantville and trying hard to
live a good life, deserve not to be confronted with their terror and indignity?
I hate what those images do to me.
But I think I now begin to understand why good people might
post such pictures online. Maybe the
real indignity is not that the torn bodies of what were once human beings like
me and you should be displayed for all to see. The real indignity is that their
blood cries aloud for justice and that I can silence them again by looking away
or by checking my email.
Perhaps the way to show these lumps of flesh the dignity of once being human beings - fellow sons and daughters of our common Parent - is to look, briefly, and be appalled at what has been done to them.
