Let's cut to the chase. Why does our world continue like this? So much suffering recorded and shared everyday, and so what? It goes on. Everyone goes on until they too are picked as a target for violence.
People don't go to Dubai despite the conditions of workers there, in fact, it's this exact fact that "certifies" the other side of the coin, the luxury provided to all tourists. It's one of the places where extreme wealth meets extreme suffering. Not everyone can stomach being this close, of course, well, not yet. Hotels in Gaza are an extension of the same idea. As capital tries to rebalance itself, why not have more places around the world razed to the ground in order to increase potential tourist value?
It seems so naive these days to believe that "exposing" misdeeds, lies and hurt has any effect in the current system. I wish it weren't so. But some kind of screen is always present, and it provides safety through separation. I watched a documentary on a warzone photographer recently and he described, well, having good intentions, winning awards, having his work displayed on buildings in Manhattan and such. A giant screen with the photo of a poor third-world child on it. Some informational text, maybe. What awareness is it really raising? How is it materially different from a conqueror nation hanging the skins of slain enemies from the castle walls?
Point being, seeing documented atrocities is not likely to suddenly change the trajectory of your life. The only thing it can make you do is feel assured that labor is being put in to enact violence in order to manufacture a sense of safety. Everything behind the screen is not you, and if you're watching it, it means you're not there, which is why I keep checking the news, perhaps. If you can hear the sound of the bullet, it wasn't meant for you, so why not learn to enjoy that sound? Seeing a dead body means you're alive. You're on the good side for now. Too strong? Maybe just homeless, then. Hate seeing them? It's enough just to be aware of their existence.
Each of these vectors that still has to be somewhat modulated and weakened through media seems to be intensifying over time. As the world speeds up, there's only so much morality that this international system of countries can feign. Sooner or later it's bound to give in to capital. It's already profitable to stream yourself harassing women or mistreating the homeless or starving someone. As the world gets more unstable and chaotic, why would any of it stop? Why would it not ramp up? We'll get used to live death. In time it too will seem mundane. Give the Omelas kid a webcam and watch tourism boom. Create more of them. Gradually eliminate the concepts of guilt and responsibility so that everyone can just enjoy the feeling of safety and face the shouts and cries with a wide, peaceful smile.
As years pass and water levels increase, more workers are imported West with less and less of a pretense. They are stripped of rights and national languages to placate the nazis and desperately maintain the luxury/suffering division. It's still the driving force of capital, now dangerously close, kept in place by bigger and bigger paramilitary units. Every simple boy blessed with a rifle is ready to fight tooth and nail to remain on its good side as he rapes his way through illiterate laborcamps before getting spit out by the system and embarking on his own quest for pity, ended prematurely (or completed?) with a single gunshot over some discount dinner, mark of leftover guilt to be wiped out in a gen or two, surely.
It's the camera, and it's the screen, and the gun, and the book, the sword, the rock, the two-way plane ticket, the wallet, even just the sheer pair of eyes, all devices of Othering, maintaining the split, all for safety, pure self-preservation, praying that we're not next, but never knowing for sure. Always more and more walls to raise.
I'm here, too, doing the exact same thing, trying not to lie to myself about why I keep thinking about suffering, in a state of half-fear, half-something, maybe still pretending to have an academic interest or being capable of doing any good while having written 737 words just to separate myself further. Maybe if I can intellectualize my own pain and distance myself from it, I'm already as safe as one can be, and going deeper is a pipe dream we'll keep striving towards through sheer violence, well, at first coyly, indirectly, through wholesome fictions, worlds to imagine escaping to, then more desperately, reality shows with their implications of poverty, the news, live footage, blurry at first, leaked by cutoff limbs of the system, then more sharp, from up close, official government media, the culture not so foreign anymore, language half-recognizable, oh, come on, we all know where this is going, don't we? Step on the fucking gas. You need more proofs of suffering, live, an uninterrupted stream. It's just you and your brother now, so you lock him up and put him just on the verge of passing out for as long as possible, and you become his keeper.
Even now I can’t stop editing this into what I think is a more appealing shape. Take this, and get mad at me, and I’ll pretend not to know why. It’ll stay between you and me. Not much does.
931 now.