Dead Air

So called because of the book that inspired this little rant.



This will probably rank as the shortest rant I've ever done. Actually, it probably doubles up as a test for whether or not you're suffering from compassion fatigue. Read the statistic below (courtesy of a book called Dead Air by a superb writer named Iain Banks), and see if it makes you feel angry. Or guilty. Or nothing at all. I'd like to think we'd all feel something of the first two but I have a feeling that, in order to ensure that we can satisfy ourselves that today is much the same as yesterday and that we're living a blameless life, we'll probably slip into that 3rd category with barely a whisper of complaint from our conscience.

Are you ready? Ok, here goes...

Remember how horrified you were when you saw the Twin Towers collapsing? And how the idea of those people throwing themselves out of the upper floors to their death gave you an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach? Maybe you even felt a few pangs of unwelcome empathy with the hundreds of people trapped there who knew that death was upon them. Well, let us just put it into perspective:

Every 24 hours, approximately 34 thousand children die in the world from the effects of poverty (chiefly from malnutrition and disease). So that's 34 thousand children (I'm not including the adults here, just the children) dead each day across the world. As I'm sure you're sick of hearing from those well-meaning lefty types (whom none of us really like because they're such doomsayers, and they maybe occasionally remind us of how idealistic we perhaps once were) those deaths are needless. I've been writing this on and off for 2 hours by the way, so that's about 2800 dead since I wrote the first word. And they are dying in a world that could feed and clothe and treat them all, with a workably different allocation of resources, but who'd prefer to allocate resources to more important things. Such as ensuring that enough beef gets to McDonalds, or that our employers can keep their profits nice and large. I may sound smug and self-righteous in saying that, but I'm no better; what do I do to make a difference other than spewing endless words that might make you think but won't make you change anything about the way you live.

Meanwhile the latest estimate is about 2800 people died in the Twin Towers, so it’s like that ghastly, grey-billowing, double barreled fall, repeated twelve times every single day; twenty four towers, one per hour, throughout each day and night. Full of children. But it's okay! We don't need to worry about it! It almost all happens in the 3rd world, South America, and Asia. As such, there is almost no danger of seeing it on our TV screens, so that’s almost the same as it not being real! And it's just as well too; after all, George Bush was so upset by the carnage and loss of innocent life at Ground Zero that he felt the need to declare Police Action on Afghanistan and war on Iraq. If he knew about this daily death toll...well, the armies of the US and UK would never sleep! They'd be invading the countries that allow this to happen (because allowing death on that scale in the name of lining the pockets of a particular government is at least as evil as killing thousands in a tower block, right?) and toppling their governments at the rate of 1 a week!

Except of course, they don't. We have the luxury of not worrying about people dying of Malnutrition. Then we invade countries where that is a very real danger, we chastise them for...well, no one is really sure what we're chastising them for (if it was about weapons of mass destruction, then how come North Korea is getting millions of dollars of aid from America, and not invaded? If it was about flouting UN resolutions then Israel would be equally in the shit), and we add to the death toll whilst making sure that they stay poor and stay hungry. All in the name of a few more millions being added to a company’s profit margin.
And then we wonder why they hate us. Sometimes, despite my best attempts at optimism, I can't help noticing just how fucking stupid we all are.