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.