Unfathomable

I’ve been following the news of the Madrid bombings on television and the Internet. I’ve seen the coverage on Greek stations and on CNN, in international newspapers and in American papers. The way it’s covered is very different. America takes a much more distanced and neutral look at it. We report the facts and let it go, moving right on to what Kerry said about Republicans or who won the latest basketball game. Greece and other European countries take a much more personal and in-depth look at what happened. In general, Greek news is more sensational than American news, but in regards to this event I haven’t really found it to be all that sensational. I’ve found it to be more real. Watching Greek news, even without understanding most of what they are saying, I can feel much more the effect of the bombing. It’s much more terrifying, devastating, and real. It has affected people who are very much like me. They aren’t unnamed. They aren’t faceless. They all have stories. They all have family and friends. They all have hopes and dreams. I find that too often this information is missing from American news. We give numbers in place of names. Or if we do give names, it’s simply a name and an age. We don’t know whose son or daughter they were. We don’t know what they liked to do. We don’t know who they wanted to be. And this makes it easier for us to swallow. I understand that we all need coping mechanisms when dealing with tragic situations. We can’t mourn for each person killed in actions of mass destruction. We can’t process all their stories. But at the same time we can’t forget that they are individual people too. Each one of the people in Madrid got on the metro that morning with a specific plan. They were going somewhere to do something that had some meaning to them. They probably never thought that they would never make it there. They could have been us. I don’t say that because I think we should be fearful or that we should think every time we go somewhere or do something that this might be the end. I say that because I believe if every person in the world thought about these people and all other people who die in such tragedies as individuals we would be doing so much more to make the world a more peaceful place to live. We’d be doing so much more to make sure that we and the people we love never have to deal with a situation like the one in Madrid.

Perhaps I am ignorant but as I watch the coverage of this, just as when I watched the September 11 coverage, I can’t imagine how anyone could do such a thing. I can’t begin to fathom how people can plan and then carry out an action that will result in the death of hundreds or even thousands of people…or for that matter even one person. How can they see, talk to, listen to, or be near even one other person and still go through with whatever they had planned? When they see a little baby, what do they think? When they see two young people holding hands, what do they think? When they hear laughter, what do they think? I simply cannot understand how someone can look at the world and all the love in it and consciously make a decision to bring harm to people. Sure there is hate. And sure there are bad things that happen. But there is so much good and so much love and so much hope and so much to live for. I don’t understand this violence. I don’t understand what people think they will accomplish with it. And I don’t understand how someone who lives in a world in which there is constant interaction between people can carry out such an act. How inhuman must one be?