The cycle continues
Apparently, some 12 year old who did well in BGT (Britain's Gone Totallyflippinmental) is going to sing at the Michael Jackson tribute concert (it's what he would have wanted... someone else doing the concert for him).Because what better way to remember and honour the tragic life of a boy-man who was denied a true childhood, resulting in what was generally agreed to be permanent mental and emotional damage, than getting another child to go through the same thing?
In other news, and I know I'm going to make some enemies with this one, a memorial has been unveiled to honour those who died in the 7/7 bombings (considerately carried out on a date that works with both the UK and US systems).
Now I'm all for honouring achievement, but these unfortunates did nothing more than commute at the wrong time. They were unlucky. The event itself should, perhaps, be remembered, but why do we insist on 'honouring' victims of this nature in the same way as we do those who make active, personal contributions to public life?
The sad truth is, it simply doesn't matter who these people were. They weren't picked out by the bombers for their beliefs or deeds. They simply happened to be there and were tragically killed.
And although each victim is named, there seems to be no provision to honour the emergency services who rushed to the scene, or the survivors who, in various acts of personal bravery, aided one another during the chaos.
Which leads me to ask, what is this memorial supposed to achieve? What should I be thinking? I can't be grateful to the dead like I might be to soldiers commemerated by a war memorial. It doesn't make me reflect on the way I live my life, beyond reminding me that it can be taken away at any time. At best, it makes me angry towards people who bomb strangers on the tube, but if you don't feel that way already, I'm not sure a statue is going to help.
I realise the families of victims need this, after all, there are gravestones for much the same reason. But is a public memorial of this type really helpful?
What do you think?
posted by Peter The Great @ 9:37 AM
4 Comments:
Oooh "a little bit controversial".
I think they should have chosen commemorate rather than honour.
As to what you're supposed to feel, I don't think it's really meant for the likes of you and me. It's more for other cultures and future generations - by spending significant time and money we illustrate that we consider ourselves a civilised culture, above blowing ourselves and civilians to pieces, and that we consider it an aberration to do so.
Of course, that ignores some of our military campaigns....
Looking at it, it appears to be a collection of 100mm x 100mm concrete fence posts. The typical cost of supply and fit per post (based on a 3,000mm post in 80kg of Class C40 mass concrete) is around £90 ex VAT.
It follows that, if the cost if significantly greater than £5K, the taxpayer has been ripped off. Not, perhaps, ripped off as much as he might have been if Gordon Brown had supervised the project personally, but ripped off nevertheless.
As for the victims... my mind turns to Stepan's musings in Tolstoy's "The Forged Coupon". One day it is somebody else's turn to die, and tomorrow it might be yours or mine. That's all there is to it. Sad, but unarguably true.
I take it all back.
Following the evening news, it seems that the posts are at least twice as high as I had thought, hence an increase in expenditure is to be expected. Let's say £10K.
It was put to me today by my Professor that this was an example of perverse Darwianism... in that the less well-off use public transport and were therefore, at least partially, pre-selected for removal. Nietzsche would have been proud.
I suppose that putting the names of the individuals killed serves more to remind us of the real human cost. If you say 'a bomb went off, killing 52 people', it sounds like so many news items we've all heard so many times before (remember all that IRA merriment that so many of us grew up with?) that I think we've become to varying degrees desensitised. But, if you hear the victims' names and ages - maybe they are the same age as you, or have the same first name, it brings home the magnitude of each individual loss, rather than the generic impact of the incident as a whole. I think that it is important to commemorate the individual stamping out of so many single - and perhaps singular - existences. Also, putting each victim's name on the memorial reminds us how random the attack was - there are names from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds.
Having said that, I remember a few years ago going to a WWII exhibition at Les Invalides in Paris and there was a huge map at the end of it showing how many people each country lost. I looked at Russia and it said 20,000,000. I looked at it for some time before the number would even register... 20 million people.
20 million.
There's nothing else to say.
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