recognition of sorrow
it’s been kind of a week. lately, it seems that i have been forced to spend a precipitous amount of time thinking about the state of humanity, and how we understand sorrow…and really, i suppose, what that can even mean.
in my international studies class on wednesday of last week, we watched a documentary on the rwandan genocide of 1994. it dealt largely with the events that occurred with regards to the civil war, but also featured pretty graphic visuals of mass killings of Tutsis by the Hutus and spent a large amount of time profiling the individuals who were resistant to foreign governments’ inaction (particularly with regard to the united states).
later that day, i went to international terrorism. that day, we were discussing the new left movement and its manifestation in germany. the raf‘s leaders and followers went through a variety of disruptive actions, it would seem, with an initial intent to simply overthrow the system, but somewhere along the way they completely fell off the tracks and went completely mad. the leaders of the group, including andreas baader and gudrun ensslin, wound up in prison and and most died soon thereafter, though it is still contested whether they were suicides (as concluded by the german government) or political murders (as stipulated by the remnants of the raf). either way, couched in the powerpoint were multiple pictures (unaltered and then artistically blurred) of the dead terrorists. something about the entire display truly unsettled me.
and then, that afternoon, i had to read night, by elie wiesel, one of the more familiar accounts of a survivor of the holocaust. reading that book puts me in a state where food doesn’t enter my body.
given all that, i then had a kinda shitty weekend.
so i have spent some serious time thinking about what it is, for humanity to feel sorrow, and how that differs from my own sorrow, or yours.
more on this when it’s less depressing.
