Conscience and relative value
I’m a great believer in the world community, and disparage any forces that undermine our global humanity in any way – be they corporate interests, unilateral invasions or terrorist acts. But I’ve got a bone to pick about the
two minute’s silence the EU is observing today for the victims of the London bombings. I say: all respect to the victims and their families who have to deal with loss. The curse of terrorism is that it strikes ordinary people, not the privileged political elite that share the blame of causality. But spare a thought for the 50-odd people that die in Iraq every day; spare a thought for the people struggling to keep their lives together in a climate of violence, disorder and chaos. The daily victims in Iraq barely raise a blip on our conscience, nestled between headlines of distant indifference. The clear-cut implication of the media focus and bias is that Britons are worth more in terms of human cost than your average Iraqi. We participate in this privileging of Westerners and have become desensitised, dehumanised to have let this happen. But there is NO relative scale of human worth, we are all equal. It is NOT the case that 1 yankee = 2 britons = 4 spanecians = 20 africans = 50 iraqi. I will participate in two minutes’ silence when there’s a
whole two days’ silence for the unaccounted and unnecessary dead of Iraq. Keep your conscious real and be mindful of the global, I say.
