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alas_a_llama's righteous LJ post of awesome, because it was epic and you should all read it.
So, lately there's been a lot of fear going around. By 'lately', I mean 'in the last ten years', and by 'going around', I mean that there appears to be some kind of perpetual hysteria in the US while over here in the UK there is an insidious running undercurrent of everybody is out to kill us. That man looked at me funny yesterday, I think he is probably a serial killing terrorist demonfiend.
Which frankly will not do. Partly because these fearious people are deluded: Terrorism is not that high right now, guys. It is quite low. It is quite low, and at a rate that is falling. Americans have the excuse that actually, this is quite new and scary (if it wasn't, they wouldn't have been so eager to fund the IRA, and I wouldn't have had somebody in crackchat telling me how actually it was a Very Good Thing that the IRA got all that funding, because that just made it fair. Yeah, I'm still angry) for them, and 9/11 was a damn prolific terrorist attack, but people in the UK should remember that you used to be being bombed daily not twenty years ago - there is a reason why you don't find bins at train stations, and that reason did not materialise in 2000 and retroactively justify this precaution.
Which all sounds like I'm saying "Don't be afraid!", and I am, so that's fine. But more than that, what I'm saying is that if you are afraid, if you literally cannot help yourself, there is a point where fear becomes a detriment; where it starts to drain enjoyment out of life; where your terror becomes a gift to your attackers and two fingers in the face of everybody else in the same situation as you; where your fear reaches the point that you might believe, wrongly, that nobody else can understand, nobody else can tell you that it's wrong, that your fear is unique and special and amazing and personal, and who is anybody else to tell you that it's wrong? What do they understand?
Essentially, there is a point where you have to go "I am very afraid, so I've drawn a stick figure rendition of my house being blown up and my family brutally murdered, because even though that will clearly never happen, I feel it is important to hone my artistic skills in case I am called upon to paint a speculative mural." To wit: There is a point where you just have to remember that terrorism is the most hilarious thing ever, except for all of those people who are dead.
It's not, of course. It's actually quite grim and dark and unpleasant, and getting comedy out of it is the equivalent of getting blood out of stone because it just. Isn't. Funny. In any sense, according to any definition, in any viewpoint, in any philosophy, it is unfunny. But try: It really doesn't matter if your jokes are lame, because every time you make a joke you're not letting them win; you're showing yourself that your fear doesn't control you, that you control your fear.
(I admittedly have a lot of fun making bomb jokes. I was raised with it, I lost people to it, I have dealt with the bigotry that stems from it, it is frankly a tiny victory every time I make one.)
Comedy is not the only way to control it, though. I remember the wife of a police officer who, upon wandering out to drive her kids to school, would drop her keys and thoroughly search beneath the car for them (if you don't catch the inferrence here, try harder). At which point she would, satisfied that there was no threat, drive her kids to school. It is a rigamarole that could have been cleaved off her schedule if the kids had walked - it wasn't that far, and shoes are notoriously poor at concealing bombs - except the point is that why should she. And why should they? They have a car. It's very shiny, and it saves them having to get up early, and why on earth would the threat of murder keep them from enjoying that?
Due caution (which I'm all for) is not the same as quaking in terror.
(And these kids were my age, which meant that at this point, they'd been taught how to recognise bombs and what to do if they saw one. They were not being blindly shepherded by a woman with skewed priorities.)
Actually, I'm being a touch disingenuous when I say that Americans are off the hook because this is all new to them - you guys are, that's not the disingenuous bit - the disingenuous bit is that actually, a lot of British people are, too. Who, of this generation in Britain, experienced that much in the way of terrorism? If you were living in rural Britain, you wouldn't have, that's for sure. Inner city Londoners, sure. People from Birmingham, or Edinburgh, or Glasgow, or Manchester, or central Cardiff, sure. Others, not so much.
Which is an important thing to remember, really: It is scary (although, yeah, guys, the Mail's hysteria notwithstanding, terrorism is lower than it has been for a very long time), especially when you've never had to deal with it before. But that's why it's so important to laugh at it (just don't laugh at the victims, please), or at the very least just disregard it.
Due caution (which I'm all for) is, after all, not the same as quaking in terror.
Remember, fear is the enemy. It is not something to relish, brag about, and cling onto.
alas_a_llama's righteous LJ post of awesome, because it was epic and you should all read it.So, lately there's been a lot of fear going around. By 'lately', I mean 'in the last ten years', and by 'going around', I mean that there appears to be some kind of perpetual hysteria in the US while over here in the UK there is an insidious running undercurrent of everybody is out to kill us. That man looked at me funny yesterday, I think he is probably a serial killing terrorist demonfiend.
Which frankly will not do. Partly because these fearious people are deluded: Terrorism is not that high right now, guys. It is quite low. It is quite low, and at a rate that is falling. Americans have the excuse that actually, this is quite new and scary (if it wasn't, they wouldn't have been so eager to fund the IRA, and I wouldn't have had somebody in crackchat telling me how actually it was a Very Good Thing that the IRA got all that funding, because that just made it fair. Yeah, I'm still angry) for them, and 9/11 was a damn prolific terrorist attack, but people in the UK should remember that you used to be being bombed daily not twenty years ago - there is a reason why you don't find bins at train stations, and that reason did not materialise in 2000 and retroactively justify this precaution.
Which all sounds like I'm saying "Don't be afraid!", and I am, so that's fine. But more than that, what I'm saying is that if you are afraid, if you literally cannot help yourself, there is a point where fear becomes a detriment; where it starts to drain enjoyment out of life; where your terror becomes a gift to your attackers and two fingers in the face of everybody else in the same situation as you; where your fear reaches the point that you might believe, wrongly, that nobody else can understand, nobody else can tell you that it's wrong, that your fear is unique and special and amazing and personal, and who is anybody else to tell you that it's wrong? What do they understand?
Essentially, there is a point where you have to go "I am very afraid, so I've drawn a stick figure rendition of my house being blown up and my family brutally murdered, because even though that will clearly never happen, I feel it is important to hone my artistic skills in case I am called upon to paint a speculative mural." To wit: There is a point where you just have to remember that terrorism is the most hilarious thing ever, except for all of those people who are dead.
It's not, of course. It's actually quite grim and dark and unpleasant, and getting comedy out of it is the equivalent of getting blood out of stone because it just. Isn't. Funny. In any sense, according to any definition, in any viewpoint, in any philosophy, it is unfunny. But try: It really doesn't matter if your jokes are lame, because every time you make a joke you're not letting them win; you're showing yourself that your fear doesn't control you, that you control your fear.
(I admittedly have a lot of fun making bomb jokes. I was raised with it, I lost people to it, I have dealt with the bigotry that stems from it, it is frankly a tiny victory every time I make one.)
Comedy is not the only way to control it, though. I remember the wife of a police officer who, upon wandering out to drive her kids to school, would drop her keys and thoroughly search beneath the car for them (if you don't catch the inferrence here, try harder). At which point she would, satisfied that there was no threat, drive her kids to school. It is a rigamarole that could have been cleaved off her schedule if the kids had walked - it wasn't that far, and shoes are notoriously poor at concealing bombs - except the point is that why should she. And why should they? They have a car. It's very shiny, and it saves them having to get up early, and why on earth would the threat of murder keep them from enjoying that?
Due caution (which I'm all for) is not the same as quaking in terror.
(And these kids were my age, which meant that at this point, they'd been taught how to recognise bombs and what to do if they saw one. They were not being blindly shepherded by a woman with skewed priorities.)
Actually, I'm being a touch disingenuous when I say that Americans are off the hook because this is all new to them - you guys are, that's not the disingenuous bit - the disingenuous bit is that actually, a lot of British people are, too. Who, of this generation in Britain, experienced that much in the way of terrorism? If you were living in rural Britain, you wouldn't have, that's for sure. Inner city Londoners, sure. People from Birmingham, or Edinburgh, or Glasgow, or Manchester, or central Cardiff, sure. Others, not so much.
Which is an important thing to remember, really: It is scary (although, yeah, guys, the Mail's hysteria notwithstanding, terrorism is lower than it has been for a very long time), especially when you've never had to deal with it before. But that's why it's so important to laugh at it (just don't laugh at the victims, please), or at the very least just disregard it.
Due caution (which I'm all for) is, after all, not the same as quaking in terror.
Remember, fear is the enemy. It is not something to relish, brag about, and cling onto.
