Part of me feels totally unqualified to comment on war. After all, I’ve never been there, seen it, felt it, touched it - so who am I to comment?
It seems the media has sent some sort of numbing solution down my spine. I couldn’t tell you how many fictionalized death scenes I’ve seen on television and in movies. I mean, how weird is it that our movie ratings system deems a woman’s bare breast to be more volatile than a gruesome murder?
The truth is I’ve become so dreadfully desensitized that seeing footage of war on my television screen or a grim photograph in the newspaper has very little emotional impact. Sadly, I don’t think I’m alone here.
Perhaps Neil Postman said it best: "By itself, a photograph cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the internal, the abstract." (Postman 72)
Therefore, how will we ever truly know war until we've been there?
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
New York: Penguin, 1986.
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