I heard the news this weekend that two members of a CBS crew were killed in an IED attack in Iraq and that a reporter had been seriously injured. I was alarmed to read on Jennifer’s blog that the reporter, Kimberly Dozier, lived in Charlottesville for a time, attending UVa and working at St. Maartens. The Hook provides more detail.
The latest news is that she’s at a military hospital in Germany, having had shrapnel removed from her head. Though she has serious injuries to her lower body, doctors have dared utter the phrase “cautiously optimistic.”
Why is the fact that she was a U.V.A. alumni alarming?
Lots of people are serving in Iraq. It should just go to figure that some of them might be UVA alum’s, however even then I don’t think it should add or detract to or from their service.
(and yeah, there’s just a wee teensy bit of snark in this post, I couldn’t help it.) ;)
There is an inverse correlation between the level of shock at violence and the number of degrees between the deceased and you.
If a random stranger in Thailand is shot, it means nothing to me.
If a random stranger in Charlottesville is shot, that’s a bit frightening.
If a friend of a friend is shot, that’s sad.
If a friend is shot, that’s tragic and angering.
That’s just life. We have many tribes, most nested within larger ones, and the smaller the tribe, the greater our empathy. Kimberly Dozier and I are members of the same tribe, albeit quite a large one, so I am shocked accordingly.
Gotcha. Well put.
Now I’m going to have to bookmark it to use in later posts when it’s a separate issue or discussion, but your well put analogy reflects why I’ve no sympathy at all for whatever the issue under discussion might be.
:)
Kimberly Dozier and I are part of an even much smaller tribe than Waldo feels. I would appreciate snarky comments be kept off the page.
With all due respect T.S.
WJ: Kurt Vonnegut has been talking a lot about tribes recently. worth your time to read what he has to say.
Ub
I will do so — thank you for that.
Just makes me proud of UVA – proud to be part of the tribe, however peripherally. I didn’t even know this about her until the news broke earlier in the week. I have a buddy who was one of the Drs. on “Baghdad ER” – also a UVA alum – and yeah, it’s nice to know that it’s not just poor kids from dead end communities who are affected by this under a kind of ‘economic draft’. It certainly does help make the war personal. I’m big on objective rationalism, but there is something unsettling about a war from which our daily lives/personal universe are completely disconnected.
The one semi-positive thing I see about this and the IED attack that got Bob Woodruff is that it helps cut through the anti-media propaganda from certain pundit/info-tainment sources. The old digs about the use of staged footage in Vietnam – the notion that it’s all just anti-American ‘liberal media’ spin – kind of melt away when the reporters and cameramen are really getting blown up – even while ’embedded’. If the military can’t protect the journalists for whom they’re trying to paint a rosy picture, well, that kinda clues you in about the “truth” on the ground over there. I mean no disrespect to the military here – but they clearly are heavily incentivized to make sure that what comes out of Iraq is ‘positive’, so you know they make an effort to protect these people.
TrvlnMn Says:
“Gotcha. Well put.
Now I’m going to have to bookmark it to use in later posts when it’s a separate issue or discussion, but your well put analogy reflects why I’ve no sympathy at all for whatever the issue under discussion might be.”
It’s amazing on how many issues I despise you local-yokal folks. The invasion in Iraq is EXACTLY about tribal matters. Yes, it is ‘normal’ to feel tribal. But what makes a person of higher conscience is the acceptance of others. Also called TOLERANCE and INTELLECT.
Yes, we are all animals. But to excuse your substandard behaviors by it is beyond pathetic in my eyes. [yeah, I know, you couldn’t care less…]
The least you could do by being allegedly ‘touched’ by someone’s death just a few ‘degrees’ away from you is to ponder the reasons and the value.
“But what makes a person of higher conscience is the acceptance of others” outside of your won tribe.
[damn blog software Waldo runs won’t allow for editing/corrections]
What sheltered lives we lead in Charlottesville! People, we are not all that different from the poor kids from dead end communities. I have lived in both worlds(the one I came from and the one I have been educated for) and found the whole range of human experience in different economic strata. It is not sadder to have a tribal member die than it is to have a stranger die- do you not look at the pictures of the lost in the Washingtont Post and feel the waste? It is sadder to lose a friend or family member than to lose a stranger but we should always know that stranger has those who mourn.
I’ll certainly agree that’s a fine ideal, but it’s just not how human psychology work. We most keenly feel our own mortality when somebody like us dies. That’s probably best; if we mourned the death of everybody in the world as we would somebody close to us, our lives would be terrible.
Waldo Jaquith Says:
I’ll certainly agree that’s a fine ideal, but it’s just not how human psychology work. We most keenly feel our own mortality when somebody like us dies. That’s probably best; if we mourned the death of everybody in the world as we would somebody close to us, our lives would be terrible.
Yeah, and every time I see a 21 year old hottie, I want to F**k her brains out! What an incredible feat I accomplish to keep my nasty mits off without an invitation! Hail to ‘natural’ human psychology, cvillenews style!
Gail, I don’t think anyone here is saying that they feel so different from “the poor kids from dead end communities” and that is the reason why they don’t mourn acutely the deaths of strangers: “they’re different from me, therefore I don’t care.” No, I think rather that some people are saying there is a continuum of intensity in terms of who we mourn. The closer, the more intense; the further, the less intense. I do believe, as Waldo points out, that this is how human psychology has evolved: I think we’re all walking holdovers from a much earlier evolutionary era, when survival dictated that you had to focus on what was close at hand. As I understand it, the research on human risk-assessment bears this out: if it’s close at hand, it’s magnified in importance, if it’s far away, it feels less significant.
I think this brain-based psychological tendency comes into conflict with a moral overlay that tells us to care about everyone equally. It’s like our survival-geared sub-brain tells us only to care for the concretely close at hand, but our moral-ethical systems tell us to care more broadly and abstractly. It’s a continual battle, and I think it’s a promising sign for the species that there are lots of human beings are making the conceptual leap to care about distant others. But I also understand when someone gets more worked up about local deaths/issues than distant deaths/issues.
I don’t much see the point, from a political efficacy standpoint, of haranguing people for being what they are: it might make the haranguer feel good, but it simply doesn’t do ANY valuable political work. In fact, I think it does damage, politically speaking, by alienating the harangued, who then digs in even more tenaciously to the criticized behavior. (That’s another inconvenient fact about human psychology–the obstinant digging-in response.) I think this is a problem that the left has had for a while now: too often we get leftists who lecture “the yokels” on their substandard ethical and political behavior. “You’re all ignorant, bad people” is too often the message that the red-staters hear from Dems and leftists. And of course that just alienates people. And so they go vote for Bush, who doesn’t make them feel stupid and immoral.
Personally, I think we have to meet people where they are and try to walk with them to where we’d like them to be. When you lead a horse, you can’t get directly in front of it and pull on the reins: the horse will lean back and refuse to go (mostly because he can’t see you, since his eyes are on the sides of his head rather than in front). You have to stand at his side and talk to him and walk next to him. Then he’ll walk alongside of you. I think the analogy is useful.
And if someone would tell me the html or ascii code I can use to make a d*mn em dash, I’d be so grateful…
It is, unfortunately, not easy to create proper dashes on-line, as articles attest. An em dash requires writing — where one wants the em dash.
Fortunately, WordPress has some shortcuts. A double hyphen (- -, though without the space) creates an en dash (–), while a triple hyphen (- – -) creates an em dash (—.) That’s at least a bit easier, with the downside that I now find myself using triple hyphens on places other than blogs, which just makes me look a bit looney.
“Personally, I think we have to meet people where they are and try to walk with them to where we’d like them to be. When you lead a horse, you can’t get directly in front of it and pull on the reins: the horse will lean back and refuse to go (mostly because he can’t see you, since his eyes are on the sides of his head rather than in front). You have to stand at his side and talk to him and walk next to him. Then he’ll walk alongside of you. I think the analogy is useful”
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Think about this as a seesaw. If you are well balanced to begin with, the interaction will be fruitful, pleasant and energizing. But if someone’s got the advantage and has decided to dig in their heals, there’s no use wiggling way stuck up there! The small-minded have taken over this land and they’re not giving it back, no matter how much cajoling you do.
No, ‘tis better to jump off the seesaw and kick the bastard in the teeth! That’ll teach ‘em!