Mind Crush

Since I was little, before I knew all the things I wanted to be, (Yes, I said all) I heard of journalists getting killed around the world. Although, with my new found (well not so new found but rather getting closer to) desire to be a journalist I seem to be hearing it a lot more.

Although I plan on staying in Canada and living a fairly routine life in that sense how can I not get affected by the reporters around the world being silenced in such horrible ways. It does not matter that I do not want to be reporting from the front lines of a war zone, I would like to think I am enough of an empath that I do not only feel pain solely for people who remind me of me. As a mere human rather, I feel it for everyone.

Society has become so desensitized, it has in countless ways, but what I refuse to be okay with is the desensitization of how ones story is cut short—after all that is what a murder is, someone ending a story they have no right to.

The shortest line in the Bible is “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Why did He, both Man and God, who new the beginning and the end weep? The verse occurs in the narrative of the death of Lazarus, a friend of Jesus. After being shown where his friend was laid, Jesus wept in front the tomb, shortly before he ordered Lazarus back to life and out of the tomb.

If He can cry over death, it is something to cry about, isn’t it? (This is not a point for Christian reflection unless you want it to be, even unbelievers can see my point I should hope. It involves us all.)

But sadly to this progressively sociopathic world it does not seem to warrant the same lamenting. Instead, and aren’t we lucky, we have idiots like Sharon Stone ignoring the devastation and making light of it through sheer and utter stupidity. Picking and choosing what to see as a real tragedy. And .that is in itself almost forebodingly funny and unreservedly pathetic and naïve. (Stone is a whole other rant for later)

Back to the job of journalists.

No one HAS to do it. People want to, or have to out of an indescribable passion for exposing the truth etc. We want and need to see the wreckage in the Sichuan province so that we know it exists. Yet by seeing it we are conditioning ourselves to be able to ignore it at a moments notice for self preservation. We do not agree with (or do for some of you) the various wars around this small orb but we want to see the aftermath to prove us right or wrong, to show those of us lucky enough to just sit here and right about it what life is really like. We want to hear stories from far away places so that we can see how lucky we are (for the selfish) and also see there is more than our introspective, privileged bubble to this earth (for the rest).

So we watch, listen, and digest the miracles and horrors that others are showing us. I will not get into ethics and potential propaganda and distortion of reporting since that is another matter entirely. But truth, truth and our need to acquire it is what keeps these people in these locales, is what keeps them from shutting up when they probably should for their own sake.

I started thinking about this a lot lately as I began watching a National Geographic feature series entitled: Don’t Tell My Mother I’m In… This documentary features host and producer Diego Buñuel (grandson of surrealist filmmaker Luis) as he exposes the unusual and often unseen side of places like North Korea, Afghanistan, Gaza, Columbia, and the Congo. This show ends up showing us something we do not always see in the mainstream media.

What got me so intrigued was his undercover job in North Korea. He was all smiles and irony as he explored this Stalinesque country full of Orwellian hotel rooms and party members all the while being closely followed by two ;’escorts’ that seems out of a twisted comedy. It is hard to explain but his dry wit made me keep watching. I think I have a mind crush on him now. Something most writers I have known get at various intervals. J

I guess what my point is, although very poorly made, is that I am proud of these individuals even though I would forbid them to leave their home had they been my children.

Luckily I do not have to ask any of you not to tell my mother I am wherever because fortunately for her I want to do what I can from here and choose to watch such important topics play on my computer and TV.