Dwayne wrote:
If you're not in the military, connected to someone in the military or otherwise motivated to pay close attention the violent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are mostly abstractions -- they fade into the background and form a sort of unpleasant noise like evening news reports of warehouse fires, "drug related" shootings and overturned 18 wheelers blocking busy interstate highways.
&
> . . . things I may or may not agree with but which I can't really do anything about and, besides, don't have any
impact on my life.
As I have noted before, as society emphasizes the individual more and more, the suffering and problems of others are turned into abstract concerns that receive little attention. The more immediate concerns of satisfying individual pleasures and salving/solving individual issues becomes paramount. We then expect others do as we have done: solve our own problems and move on.
The success of oppression/capitalism is bought by cultivating the fetish of individualism so people only care about themselves and their needs.
> In the end it won't matter because Iraq is far away and we always recover from these things gaining new dramatic films, riveting books and special episodes of our favorite sitcoms in the process. This isn't to say people
aren't concerned, of course they are. But it's a distant sort of concern.
I said to a group of friends who were talking about the film Osama that wouldn't it have been better if the conflict that arose that allowed the creation of Osama had never existed in the first place? But it is just such art house films that allow people to stay in touch with suffering but not have to experience it. The aesthetic experience allows them to believe that are bearing witness to suffering and oppression, while all they are actually doing is indulging in their own pursuit of pleasure.
I must respectfully disagree with Dwayne: I do not believe it is even a distant sort of concern. It is only the use of others' suffering to produce aesthetic pleasure. People want to be amused.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister