Humanity’s obsession with death and the spectacle around it has really been front and center over the last few weeks. First, we were forced to watch Terry Schiavo die, while right-wing nut jobs took her family for the ride of their life, now there is nothing on but the Pope.
All we do is talk about the Pope and the glory (or most of the time not so glorious) of everything he has done, but it is very apparent at that our obsession with death is confined to white people. The media has quite successfully nixed any attention to the civilians being killed by the military in Iraq. And of course there will be another lurch forward in the number of deaths in Iraq with today’s new presidential election.
However, the deaths of Iraqis or Sudanese are obviously absent from televisions and newspapers the present. Instead of focusing on people dieing naturally, let’s start talking about all of the people being murdered by unnecessary interventions in the world.
Book to read: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice