Media-Induced 9/11 Syndrome

[FUNKED1]

They say we watch televised sports to get vicarious feelings of victory, comradeship, sportsmanship, excitement, etc.  Even though we aren't involved in any direct way, the images and events make us feel part of the team.  I can sort of get that.  It makes sense to want to share in positive feelings.

But what I don't understand is the people who feel the need to do the same thing with tragedy.  Poring over every video clip, still image, audio recording, or interview, even repeatedly visiting the site hoping to get some small taste of tragedy.  Trying to relive the emotion of something that didn't even happen to them.  What have these people got inside them that makes them seek artificial pain like this?  Creepy.

[lasersailor184]

Trying to relive the emotion of something that didn't even happen to them.

But it did happen to us.  It could have been any one of us in any multitude of different targets.  It just happened to the pentagon, the two towers, and the whitehouse.

The part you have to realize, is that they would have killed you as well as any of the 3,000+ people who died that day.  They don't care who they kill, as long as they are american.

[bj229r]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
They say we watch televised sports to get vicarious feelings of victory, comradeship, sportsmanship, excitement, etc.  Even though we aren't involved in any direct way, the images and events make us feel part of the team.  I can sort of get that.  It makes sense to want to share in positive feelings.

But what I don't understand is the people who feel the need to do the same thing with tragedy.  Poring over every video clip, still image, audio recording, or interview, even repeatedly visiting the site hoping to get some small taste of tragedy.  Trying to relive the emotion of something that didn't even happen to them.  What have these people got inside them that makes them seek artificial pain like this?  Creepy.

I shall remember this day always. Funked said somethin I halfway agree with:O

[Tarmac]

I'd say it's more of a sport in itself  -- a competition to outdo the next person so that the winner can feel like the bigger victim and deserving of some sort of pity or respect.  Discussions about 9/11 often come back to "My cousin in law once removed had a friend's sister that lives in upstate New York and drove by the hole and cried" -- as if this vague connection somehow gives them some sort of authority in the discussion.  It's an argument ender, as no one is going to challenge your authority by belittling your personal "scars" from the event -- that would be rude and might make the "victim" cry.  

Whether it's your bad health, your financial state, your six degrees of Kevin Bacon relation to a bad event, people have a desire to externalize their problems and it manifests itself through the victim mentality.  If everybody is a victim, as in a national tragedy, then it comes down to who can distinguish themselves as the bigger victim.  

Or maybe I'm just jaded.

[lukster]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
Trying to relive the emotion of something that didn't even happen to them.  What have these people got inside them that makes them seek artificial pain like this?  Creepy.

Have you no sense of connection to your fellow Americans? I find that "creepy".

[StSanta]

The key is "it didn't happen to them".

It's a recognized and as far as I know well research psychological phenomena. Provokes *some* feelings of grief that are easy to handle and have a positive net-effect without all the *hard* aspects of grief. It requires a connection - but not a too strong one -  to a tragedy of some sort.

So you can have your cake and eat it. We're all doing it to some degree. Some wallow in it though. I do my best to recognize when it's happening.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by lasersailor184
But it did happen to us.  It could have been any one of us in any multitude of different targets.

The part you have to realize, is that they would have killed you as well as any of the 3,000+ people who died that day.  They don't care who they kill, as long as they are american.

Exactly. They came into OUR house, and they killed OUR family. Even Americans I do not like personally, I do not agree with, and I do not get along with, are STILL Americans. My fellow Americans. My family.

[lukster]

Originally posted by StSanta
It's a recognized and as far as I know well research psychological phenomena. Provokes *some* feelings of grief that are easy to handle and have a positive net-effect without all the *hard* aspects of grief. It requires a connection - but not a too strong one -  to a tragedy of some sort.

So you can have your cake and eat it. We're all doing it to some degree. Some wallow in it though. I do my best to recognize when it's happening.

It's called empathy and is often a conscious decision to share the burden of grief with one's "neighbors". If you think it doesn't help knowing that others share your grief then you've not suffered much.

[FUNKED1]

Empathy... neighbors.  I reserve those terms for people I actually encounter in real life, not pixels on a TV screen.
If we were going to apply empathy to anonymous strangers on TV, why not tsunami victims or victims of military aggression, who have died in far greater numbers (by a factor of over 100!) since 9/11?  
I'm equally bummed out by the death of any innocent person, regardless of nationality.  That's normal, that's human, that's empathy.  Focusing morbidly on only those victims that the corporate controlled media and government choose to consecrate, THAT's creepy.

[lukster]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
Empathy... neighbors.  I reserve those terms for people I actually know.
If we were going to apply empathy to anonymous strangers on TV, why not tsunami victims or victims of military aggression, who have hese people have died in far greater numbers (by a factor of over 100!) since 9/11?

Is it really that hard to extend your feelings to people you have never met but who were very much like you? Do you not realize that that attack was on you as much as it was the people who died that day?

[Elfie]

Originally posted by lukster
Is it really that hard to extend your feelings to people you have never met but who were very much like you? Do you not realize that that attack was on you as much as it was the people who died that day?

Exactly. 9-11 was an attack on America and against Americans, not just against  the WTC and Pentagon.

[Stang]

Ratings and $$, that's all.

[FUNKED1]

Originally posted by lukster
Is it really that hard to extend your feelings to people you have never met but who were very much like you? Do you not realize that that attack was on you as much as it was the people who died that day?

Something like 150,000 people die every day, many of them in tragic circumstances, pretty much all of whom I've never met, all of whom are very much like me as far as I'm concerened.  If I extended them all the same feelings I extend to those I know, I wouldn't have any feelings left to extend.  I'd have to hire illegal laborers to grieve for me.  What I don't get is why people would pick 3,000 of them to continually obsess over for years on end, just because they were on TV and spoke the same language and lived inside the same artificial political boundaries.  Even more to the point, what I don't get is why people take it even further and use thier vicarious grief for those 3,000 to justify the infliction of tragedies on a far greater scale across the globe.

[lukster]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
Something like 150,000 people die every day, many of them in tragic circumstances, pretty much all of whom I've never met, all of whom are very much like me as far as I'm concerened.  If I extended them all the same feelings I extend to those I know, I wouldn't have any feelings left to extend.  I'd have to hire illegal laborers to grieve for me.  What I don't get is why people would pick 3,000 of them to continually obsess over for years on end, just because they were on TV and spoke the same language and lived inside the same artificial political boundaries.  Even more to the point, what I don't get is why people take it even further and use thier vicarious grief for those 3,000 to justify the infliction of tragedies on a far greater scale across the globe.

Whenever I hear of a tragedy and learn something of the people involved I am saddened. So you have no empathy to spare, ok, no problem. Ridiculing those of us that do is just small.

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
Trying to relive the emotion of something that didn't even happen to them.  What have these people got inside them that makes them seek artificial pain like this?  Creepy.

You don't know me enough to make this statement.   Sweet attention potato post otherwise.   You are PNG to me.   You don't know as much you'd like to admit.   Keep trying to fool the other's, you aren't fooling me.