CURRENT MOON

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Perspective


I work in Washington, D.C. and live in Arlington, VA, so I don't want, in any way, to minimize the lives that were lost and damaged by the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Arlington was declared a disaster area; almost everyone knew someone who was in the Pentagon when the plane hit. But perhaps some perspective would be a good thing.

In Endgame, Derrick Jensen makes the point that Americans appear to believe that "the lives of people killed by foreign terrorists are more worthy of notice, vengeance, and future protection than those killed, for example, by unsafe working conditions, or by the turning of our total environment into a carcinogenic stew. Let's say that three thousand people died in those attacks. In no way do I mean to demean these lives once presumably full of love, friendship, drama, sorrow, and so on, but more Americans die each month from toxins and other workplace hazards, and more Americans die each week from preventable cancers that are for the most part direct results of the activities of large corporations, and certainly the results of the industrial economy. The lack of outrage over these deaths commensurate to the outrage expressed over the deaths in the 9/11 bombing reveals much -- if we care to reflect on it -- about the values and presumptions of our culture."

The difference in outrage springs, I think, from Jensen's Fourth Premise: Civilization is based on a clearly[-]defined and widely[-]accepted[,] yet often unarticulated[,] hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower on the hierarchy is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

The violence done by corporations to large groups of Americans and to our environment is invisible and not the cause of outrage because it is done by those higher on the hierarchy (the wealthy who make money off of these practices) to those lower on the hierarchy (working Americans, women who get breast cancer, etc.) The terrorist attacks of 9/11, however, were done by those lower on the hierarchy (brown people, foreigners, non-xians) to those higher on the hierarchy (mostly white people, Americans, xians). Thus, that violence is regarded, in Jensen's words, "with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."

We've spent billions and billions of dollars "responding" (foolishly and ineffectively) to 9/11 -- money spent on everything from increased "security" at airports to bombing Iraq. When are we going to spend the same amount of money responding to the violence done to working Americans and to our environment? And if we're not going to respond to that violence, can we really pretend to be living in anything except a patriarchy?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

if it had been only 'colored' folks or poor white 'workers' killed by 'terrorists'--as are the primary victims of work-place and environmental injuries--there would have been considerably less outrage by the attacks, i reckon...
./

Anonymous said...

Great post. This country has on odd cult of the dead (Elvis, anyone?) and the 9/11 victims fall into it. Though, again oddly, that fetish doesn't stop the very same worshippers who attack the victims' family members who are pushing to uncover the truth about that day.

One small quibble - our money hasn't gone for more security. "Security" has been the con to funnel money to Bush cronies and to enact policies to harass ordinary Americans and erode our civil liberties.

Unknown said...

I've been saying this for a while, but not so articulately. Cars, guns, drugs, law enforcement, disease, pollution, you name it, people are a lot less bothered by that than the WTC...

You could also tie this hierarchy to the post over at Eschaton regarding the accepted range of opinions (http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_12_03_atrios_archive.html#116541997663290463) - in that case, Liberals are not considered high enough caste to be able to speak.

SOPKA said...

WE need a national day of mourning for all the people killed when Reagan called in the disabled and had them kicked off of social security and then went through the list of Disabled veterans and let them go denying them medical care in VA hospitals. Then we mourn all the aids victims created by the lack of response by the policemen of the world America while he was on Watch. MAYBE THEN we will stop hero worshipping the Gipper and call him a killer