we've seen what happens at war. now, what?
unsolicited advice, session 04: how to survive the end of the world
An image is drained of its force by the way it is used, where and how often it is seen.
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
The world has been ending since way before I was born. That first December of the new millennium was filled with possibilities and dreams. But I never stood a chance. I was born in a fucked-up world.
Since the beginning, the history of humankind has been violent, yet never have we been able to see it so clear as right now. Every year since I have had access to the internet, I have witnessed people go on social media and voice their concerns about WWIII and the “end of the world” from the safety of their houses and the comfort of their couches. Yet the end never comes. The end of the world it’s an unstoppable loop that keeps replaying itself time and time again.
Amidst the Trump administration, the solidification of far-right parties in Europe, the genocide of the Palestinian people, threats of nuclear war, the uprising of conservatism everywhere in the world, and living in a post-pandemic world, I understand the sentiment behind phrases like “the world is ending,” but at the same time, I ask, hasn’t it always?
To prove my point, here is a journal entry from Baudelaire from the early 1860s:
“It is impossible to glance through any newspaper, no matter what the day, the month or the year, without finding on every line the most frightful traces of human perversity… Every newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a tissue of horrors.”
If you read that entry without context, you would probably think it was written today and not centuries ago. But it could’ve been written about any place in time since the creation of the newspaper.
As humans, we have a tendency to believe our experiences are unique and isolated, but we are often mistaken. The premonition of the end of the world has been around forever. Whether it was plagues, natural disasters, viruses, or war, humankind has always lived on the verge of danger. In Regarding The Pain Of Others (2003), Susan Sontag argues, “central to modern expectations, and modern ethical feeling, is the conviction that war is an aberration, if an unstoppable one. That peace is the norm, if an unattainable one. This, of course, is not the way war has been regarded throughout history. War has been the norm and peace the exception.”
So, if war has existed for so long and has always been carried out by humans, why do people call times of war “inhumane”? What does it truly mean to be human? Are the atrocities perpetrated by humans not human? Is violence not human?
If you think about it there hasn’t been a peaceful decade in the modern or postmodern world, not really. Even in relatively peaceful times, egoistical, tyrannical, and greedy forces have been waiting to resuscitate at the best opportunity, and they have taken every opportunity to do so.
When I started writing this four months ago, I wasn’t sure I understood what people meant when they said our society had lost its humanity, as all “inhumane” acts have been perpetrated by humans. What I learned as I was gathering information was that what people mean is that we have become so desensitized to the pain of others we have lost our ability to stand up for each other.
At the same time, I think a lot of us choose to ignore our past and refuse to accept that humans are violent beings. We forget that we carry the DNA of people who enjoyed watching public lynchings, hangings, and torture being inflicted upon people as well as animals. We forget that humans are complex and full of shades of gray.
There was a time when it was believed that if everyone around the world could see the impact that war had on people and their land, we would all be more likely to be opposed to it, and in some cases this was proved right. But not always, and certainly not right now. We have seen and read what happens at war, and yet it keeps happening time and time again. In the book I mentioned above, Sontag argues this is because in a world that’s hyper-saturated with images, those that should matter have a diminishing effect, and the amount of violent images that we are exposed to have a contrary effect than the one desired; thus, making us feel numb, instead of sympathetic. When she wrote the text, social media didn’t exist. In today’s world, we don’t rely solely on traditional journalism to tell us what happens at war. We can see it through an Instagram or TikTok live. People of all ages and backgrounds are reporting violent acts as soon as they happen, democratizing the act of reporting but also overloading the medium and overwhelming the audience.
Every day I witness suffering, in real life and online. I am no insensitive towards people’s pain. I sympathize with them. I feel hopeless, anxious, and enraged for them. But I question how much worth there is in my tears if they dry as fast as they came out. I know I shouldn’t put all the pressure of the world on my shoulders. It’s not my burden to carry, at least not by myself, yet I fear that my sympathy and prayers serve no one and nothing.
Later on in the book, Sontag writes, “so far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent—if not an inappropriate—response.” I agree; it’s not consequential to feel sympathy for people in pain, if all we do about their situation is feel bad about it. Sympathy might be the initial spark needed to transform sentiments into actions, but it is not enough to start a fire.
I know that caring is exhausting. Giving away our time, patience, and resources to people and beings in need is hard. I understand and relate to feeling overwhelmed in times like this. I too feel exhausted from seeing so much pain, and I don’t think staying glued to my phone and TV watching the news all day will take any of it away. I do think we need to stop pretending we are powerless. So, now that we have seen with our own eyes how war, death, starvation, violence, and destruction look, what do we do?
As Sontag brilliantly wrote, “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” I firmly believe that the only way of helping other people in pain is by dealing with our own pain first. It all starts by acknowledging that those feelings we categorize as “inhumane” are part of us, and at the same time we must not only reckon with our violent present but also with our violent past.
In times of geopolitical, humanitarian and economic crisis, those in power want us scattered, scared, and overwhelmed. To resist we need to remember knowledge is power. It’s always been. But is not enough, and neither is sympathy. Our way of resisting tyranny and fascism cannot be based on sharing infographics on Instagram stories. We must be able to imagine a better future and we do so by fostering hope instead if hopelessness and transforming that hope into collective action.
Inigo Laguda said it best in his essay, On slogans, “Resisting as an act of resistance is more necessary than ever yet more absent than any of us truly want to admit… Resistance is a word inseparable from radical struggle—it is how revolutionaries articulate their fight against oppressors. Resistance requires the activity of confronting injustice, it requires a spiritual voltage that’ll grant its inhabitants the courage to look snarling beasts in the face while fear quakes in their chest.”
At the end of the day, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and asks only a crumb of us1. But I think we can give each other more than crumbs. We must.
If you have been feeling overwhelmed and extremely burned out but still want to be involved and informed this what I recommend
Focus on one issue at a time, you can’t be informed on everything that happens everywhere at all time. Choose one cause you deeply care about and follow that. Information without action is just useless brainload. But if you are informed on a singular issue and you give it your full focus you can find ways to advocate for that cause, instead of feeling paralyzed by your lack of power.
Don’t believe everything you read. Headlines are meant to catch your attention, and most times, are not the entirely true. Read the whole paper before jumping into conclusions. Find experts you can trust and lean on them. Pay attention to patterns. Single actions don’t mean much without repetition in these cases.
Do something with that pain you are carrying. Go smash some old plates and glasses. Write a poem. Make a video. Cry. Speak out. Don’t let it brew in your in intestines until it grows into something unimaginable.
Call things what they are. Language matters. Before you start calling someone a name or a situation something just because you heard someone on the internet say it you need ask yourself, do I understand what this term mean? If you don’t even know what the words mean, you should probably look into it and then decide if that it is the right term you should use when naming a person or a situation.
Take breaks and process. Remember they want you overwhelmed and scattered. Protect your peace. Just not till the point in where your only focus is yourself.
Stop relying on celebrities to tell you what to stand for. Why are you waiting for your favorite artist to tell you who to vote for? Why do you expect A-List celebrities to share your values? Celebrities are not and should not be our moral compass. They can’t be. They are too far removed from real life struggles to empathize or truly care. They are too scared of losing their money and status and of going against the people who employs them. They don’t care enough, because these issues don’t affect them personally.
Get out of your house. I fucking mean it. You can’t be calling yourself a “radicalized” person because you read feminist marxist theory. All of that knowledge won’t be of importance if you don’t have what’s most important for us; connection. What can you do with all the theory if you aren’t even able to make small talk with your grocery store cashier? Translate that knowledge into action by building community and standing up for those around you.
Don’t give your power away. I know it is too much sometimes, but don’t give up. Remember we are not the first generation going through trying times. The world has ended before, and we are still here.
Here I am using Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” poem to remind you that hope lives inside all of us and that if we don’t hope for a better world we will never get one.