Who here is so desensitized...(warning - difficult subject ahead)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

that seeing a guy (apparently) beheaded on TV doesn't affect you as much as it should?
Sometimes I worry about myself. I've seen the abuse photos from Iraq, and on an intellectual level I react, but I don't react much on a visceral, emotional level. Don't get me wrong, I despise the people who committed these vicious acts (the abuse and the beheading), but I don't react much emotionally. In fact, within five or ten seconds, I'm thinking about what the repercussions and reactions to the act will be. I don't like this, but there it is. I respond to reality as if watching a movie, I can't make myself think 'this is really happening', I can't make that detachment between reality and unreality. I'd like to be able to.
Anyone else desensitized to world events?

[bryant69]

1. I guess I could have voted either way

I personally went out of my way not to see the video once I had the basic facts straight (I did see stills). Just knowing it had happened bugged me enough.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Screaming Lord Byron]

2. Yeah, that's just an example. I notice this with a lot of violence on news

[demnan]

3. I have to admit I am

The one thing that got me emotionally was that poor little boy with his arms blown off.

I was repulsed by the photos of prison abuse, but I didn't react emotionally. As a woman I sometimes expect I'm supposed to react that way, but with all the horror I've seen on T.V. and otherwise, I don't.

I remember taking pictures at the Pentagon on 9/11, I live close by. The side of the building was burning and people were dead, we knew, but the emotional scope of the moment did not hit me then, not until a few days later.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

6. The Iraqi boy was one of the few times I reacted emotionally.

It was just such an extreme image, and such a wreck of a young life.

[terrya]

4. I'm ashamed of myself for not being as sickened as I should be.

Very sad to say, but I think Berg's beheading is SOP over there. Just a matter of course.

It's like...this has happened before (think Daniel Pearl) and it happens again...and well. That's life in that part of the world.

SLB, partly it's too much, maybe. Of course we're taking in the prison abuse pictures. And now this. And maybe our minds just shut down after everything. Maybe it's a form of denial, in its way.

Does any of this make sense?

Terry

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. Yeah, it's a difficult subject to deal with.

But after a certain point, you become detached from what you see. Not a nice feeling, but it may be a defence mechanism.

[Az]

7. It did not come out of the blue

We ourselves are aware of the wrongness of our actions in Iraq. We recognise that our actions are not justified (at least by the means we claim) and are going to be interpretted by those we attack as wrong. We expect them to react. Thus when they do, some of the horror and anger is replaced by saddness at our own responsibility for creating the situation.

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. I cannot even look at the pictures on the news of Nick Berg. I get

choked up seeing the pictures of the abuse in Iraq. I look at the pictures of those soldiers we have lost and think of my son, and weep.

I posted it the other night, before Mother's Day, but I don't think many saw it. The single hardest thing for me, especially on the day before Mother's Day was imagining a mother running out to pick up her decimated baby out of the sand...only to wipe the grit and blood off of his face and kiss him one last time. I cannot sleep for thoughts like that.

No, I am not desensitized.

[HamdenRice]

9. Why I didn't react ...

Probably unlike other people on these boards, I have seen people get shot and killed during political violence in a third world country and it is a devastating experience. I have also seen horrific pictures from Liberia's civil war.

To be brutally honest, the Berg video has absolutely no effect on me because it is utterly unrealistic. I consider myself a very realistic, pragmatic person and not a conspiracy theorist; but at this point I simply don't see the Berg video as a murder. Of course, Nick Berg was murdered somehow, but this video is not a record of that murder.

To me, looking at the Berg video is like looking at special effects in a movie. This has nothing to do with desensitization, but with my belief that the video is not real.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

11. Yeah, I maybe shouldn't have hung this on the Berg video.

It's not a good example, there is something strange about it.

[buddhamama]

10. no for me

i am actually feeling a bit guilty this morning because i have yet to view the video of the decapitation.

at the start of this illegal war i vowed that i would look at every photo and/or video i could find or came across, no matter how disturbing or graphic, if for no other reason than to remind myself everyday of the suffering of others.
i refused to be a citizen of this country and not know of the effects, to be blind to what was being done in 'my name'.

i am sometimes more detached emotionally, but, it never lasts long.

no, i'm not desensitized.

[ScreamingMeemie]

12. Don't feel guilty. I cannot bring myself to do this either buddhamama

It's just too much for me to bear.

[GumboYaYa]

13. I thought I was.

I boldly clicked on the link to the video and started watching. When the miserable deed began I could not keep watching to see it to its end.

Later, I recounted the video to my wife and in the middle of the descripton I broke down in tears and cried uncontrollably for about a minute. I'm not sure if it was the gruesome nature of this one act or the accumulated horror of the whole invasion that hit me so hard last night, but on a certain level I was thankful for the reminder that I still have some of my humanity after going through all of this.

[LittleApple81]

14. Because I am NOT disensitized I am suffering with bouts of depression

and uncontrollable sadness.
To combat this and my feelings of total impotence, I have been putting my money where my mouth is (helping in campaigns and different causes, which I did not do before). I am also going to go house to house for elections...it is not going to help Kerry in my state (totally republican) but at least try to make people aware of what is going on. My neighbor is a Democrat who never goes to the Web. He is so uninformed... so I am first getting info to him before the election time.

[Solomon]

43. I went into therapy to get

some relief. My depression started after "selection 2000" and I don't know where I'd be without the therapy.

[CWebster]

15. Bread and circuses

Entertainment for the empire.

No, I didn't watch it, but I have been fearing the release of some of the more sadistic US atrocity shots as well. Someone posted a link to some Iraqi women detainee rape photos posted on an obscure website, and I couldn't bring myself to go there. By the time I decided to risk it, the site had disappeared.

For me, yes, it does raise outrage. Which is why I am suspicious of the timely airing of this beheading as a potentially cynical effort to deflect outrage to the Arab evil-doers and lessen the sting of barbarism practices against them when more damning photos are released. Damage control.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

16. This is getting like the decline of the Roman Empire, I'm afraid.

The prison photos are essentially a Roman orgy, the (apparent) beheading seems similar. A complete breakdown of humanity.

[Az]

23. Not far off the mark

We have our spectacles to keep the people occupied as the empire is looted by those in charge.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. Not I.

I watch the worst of the worst violence and gore in television and movies (and rather enjoy it), and yet I am no where near desensitized to real life violence.

[sui generis]

18. it's always been reality

We have a double standard that we are allowed to invade someone's country and kill 10,000 of them in order to save them (but no videos) and then we're confronted with a real terrorist organization for the first time in Iraq doing something despicable to one American. Gosh, it is depressing, and the only thing we can do about depression is to FIX THE PROBLEM. We are now calling the abuses of Iraqi prisoners "humiliations" in a frantic doublespeak -- what about the 20 dead prisoners? Were they humiliated to death?

And another thing - I appreciate that Nick Berg may have been a wonderful person with his heart in the right place, but of all the places in the world that needed him, he was in a war zone long before he was ever picked up by the FBI. I am sad for him and for his family that he didn't choose to exercise the discretion to avoid becoming a pawn in someone else's game, but he did and these are the consequences.

[hang a left]

19. I think that I have chosen to desensitize myself.

I don't look at the war dead anymore. I have seen the armless boy. That was also when I quit looking at pictures. I saw the first set of torture photos, that was enough. I have heard about the graphic nature of some of the other photos and videos, that is good enough for me. I don't want to see anymore. I could never bring myself to even look at the stills of the Berg murder, let alone the video.

There is so much evil in this world and Iraq certainly has not cornered the market in human suffering and death. I am aware of the attrocities of today and of the past. Sometimes it seems surreal to me. I know it is out there, but I make a disconnect inside, for my own sanity. I don't get too emotional, I have a more matter of fact experience. I feel so powerless. What can I, an American woman living in the safety and comfort of upper-middle class Southern California, really do.

If I was to think about what enrages me the most, it is the stupidity of the White Republicans I am surrounded by. I let myself get pissed off about that. I just can't let myself go and experience the pain and suffering and death of innocent human beings. It is a survival thing for me.

edit for sp and missing words

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Has the beheading been shown on TV anywhere?

British TV showed a few seconds of Berg kneeling, and then just said 'after that, he was beheaded, and the head held up'. I assumed Canadian, US and probably all Western TV (and quite likely Arabic TV too) wouldn't actually broadcast the beheading - it doesn't tell you much more, and is really just wallowing in the man's agony.

If they don't actually show it, then it is much closer to the everyday headlines of '2 contractors killed', '4 Iraqis killed' etc. With 6 billion people in the world, you know intellectually that many die violent deaths each day, but you can't react the same way that you would if it were someone you knew; or if you saw it happen. So I think the retreat to analysing the repercussions is inevitable.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

21. Fair enough, I should have said 'Computer Screen' rather than 'TV'

I meant TV in the sense that it was recorded on video and broadcast, and I saw it.

[VelmaD]

22. Not desensitized...

and it's eating away at me. I made myself watch that video just like I made myself look at the prison torture pictures adn just like I've made myself look at every other gruesome image from this war. I feel like I OWE it to the victims not to turn my head away and pretend it doesn't exist...even if every image burns its way into my brain and makes me sick and keeps me from being able to sleep anymore.

I literally threw up for the first time since I was about 10 years old yesterday.

[Minstrel Boy]

24. I think I've become more sensitized.

A few years ago I could watch videos from Chechnya, containing scenes similar to the Berg tape, without much impact beyond run-of-the-mill horror.

And I watched the Daniel Pearl video. It was haunting and disturbing, but I felt I needed to see it.

But little Ali, with his arms blown off. That was the end of the line for me. I want to cry just thinking about it.

I don't want to see anymore. I've had my fill of horror. It's not that I'm blind to it, it's just that now I just see it too vividly. So no more for me.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

25. Good. Maybe I'll become re-sensitized.

I'd hate to think I'll be going through life desensitized.

[hlthe2b]

26. I think anything seen on tv anymore has lost significant impact...

(on edit, I haven't seen the video, which I believe is on the web only--I won't seek it out, either, because I have seen too much to need to see something like this. I am not so cynical yet, that amateur videotape of this kind of attrocity, especially streaming though the net does not horrify me. But just thinking of the horror going through this young man in the seconds before his death is enough of a visual image to me. I have no need to see the actual event. While I am really not judging others who may be curious, but I do suggest that those who have a need to understand this kind of act more fully to take a trip to a cattle or hog slaughterhouse. That alone, is horrific enough.)


It is true that the more horrendous violence we see on a semi-regular basis, the less likely we are to react to it and because tv/movie screens are usually the route in which we see it, it does seem not unexpected that we would desensitize a bit to that source of imagery. Whether it is a kneejerk assumption it is unreal, or perhaps a subconscious conclusion that it is staged, I don't know... For me, though, photos and graphic textual description still gaven't lost their impact and grainy video through the internet would likely have similar horrific impact.

[LizW]

27. Not desensitized, but depressed

I didn't watch the Berg video. I cried just reading everyone's reactions to it.

The prison abuse photos were horrifying, particularly the one with the dogs and the unhooded prisoner who looked so terrified.

I will never in my life forget the picture from early in the war of the man carrying the little girl with her legs and feet shredded and hanging in mangled strips.

I feel it all, guilt, anger, helplessness, depression, fear. There's also sort of a pessimism taking hold. I'm beginning to feel hopeless. Every time Bush comes out with some predictable crap like fawning over Rumsfeld, I think we've sunk so deep into this mire we'll never get out.

[BigMcLargehuge]

28. I have never been "sensitized" to this sort of violence

Maybe because I've spent so long reading and studying history that I know humanity's ability for evil/violence knows no Earthly bounds. So, with the exception of the first day of "shock and awe" where several mushroom clouds rose along the Tigris from aerial/cruise misile bombardment (and even then it was anger directed at the "average American" who gave tacit approval to this administration's war in Iraq by virtue of their apathy).

The last time I remember reacting to such imagery was in 1994 during the Rwanda genocide, though news of it came after the events in that country.

Mogadishu didn't do it
Haiti didn't do it
September 11th didn't do it
The war in Afganistan didn't do it
Dead bodies/pieces of bodies in Israel/Palestine didn't/don't do it

I am not sure what the reason is really, maybe it's because I write fiction, or because I was a journalist for a short while, but at any rate, I watched the video, grimaced when Berg was killed, then moved on to other things. I did catalog the images in my head, and I'll write about in my journal, but that's the extent of my emotion. It's an image, or series of images, illustrating human barbarity. It's not new, and I know that.

I guess writing about The Rape of Nanking (and all the research that went with it) reset my ability to react to real-life horror that is no personally connected to me and my family. However, I can imagine what it's like to be one of Berg's family members knowing that the world watched their son, brother, etc murdered. But that imagination only goes so far.

Was it awful? Most definitely. Do I care? Yes. Has it had any measurable emotional impact on me? No.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

31. I've read a lot of history myself, and you may be onto something.

Once you've read of Vlad Tepes, of Auschwitz, or the execution of William Wallace or Edward II, I think you become detached from later reports. Events in Iraq do seem in that medieval vein.

[BigMcLargehuge]

32. I've lived in the (fictional) mind of a Japanese soldier in 1937

for the last three months, working my way through his gradual acceptance of the horrors of The Rape of Nanking. Previous to that I studied the 1st World War for years, right down to the individual letters and journals of the soldiers who fought and died there.

It's cold, and I am sure no one will see it this way; Yes, Berg's death was horrible, all murder is horrible, but there's a whole lot of it past and present. Just because we don't normally see it so graphically doesn't mean it doesn't happen every hour of every day. Murder is not an abstract concept for me, I understand it.

[ulysses]

45. I think that's spot-on.

I've read a lot of WWI history as well - hell, maybe understanding the nature of that conflict is key.

Our technology allows us to believe that this kind of thing doesn't happen in wartime. Someone last night made the point that the average American could push a button and drop a bomb that killed untold numbers, but would be hard pressed to cut a living person's head off. Certainly true, but there's a yawning gap in the understanding of the two acts that remains unaddressed.

There is nothing one man will not do to another.

- Carolyn Forché

[redqueen]

29. No, but I almost wish I was.

I haven't watched the video and won't.

[AP]

30. But is it the picture iteself that desensitizes you? After all, we know...

...this shit is going on whether we see pictures or not.

It's sort of shameful to think that we should only care once we see a picture. If we didn't care so much before we saw the picture, why should the picture move us.

We shouldn't be all self-reflexive for not being more traumatized about the picture. We should start reflecting on why we aren't more outraged about the politics that brings about this shit on a daily basis all over the globe. In other words, how can we sit by and not do everything we can to make sure liberals are getting elected all over the world, and to make sure that the fascists are losing everywhere.

[Cat Atomic]

33. No. This shit eats at me intellectually and emotionally.

I've never been so outright disgusted and angry as I have been this week.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

34. this video has a very visceral effect on me.

about two years ago i saw a video of a russian i beleive having his throat cut with a knife and it really hit me hard. this video of berg gives me the same feeling. real life brutality gets to me and i grew up on and still play violent video games.

[Delano]

35. There was a time when I was

until my early 20s. At some point, I started to reject all ugliness. Stopped listening to any sort of hateful music, and I avoid gratuitiously violent movies (unless it's for a reason, like Schindler's List) and I find that I'm pretty sensitized to such things. I can't watch Tarantino's horrble films because they are so pointlessly violent.

I watched the beheading and it did disturb me. I had to go to my kids' room as they slept and hug them a few more times. My heart goes out to tthat Ber kid's parents. I broke my heart to read that the dad was RELIEVED that his son was beheaded and not killed in a more slow agonizing way.

If you are desensitized, you are probably consuming more media than you should, violent material in particular. Being desensitized doesn't make you a bad person, but at times like this, it's a sad way to be.

Personally I'd rather be horrified and saddened than blase about it.

Media today seems designed to numb the senses and emotions & senses, while destroying thought. Ever seen "The Mummy 2"? That thing was nothing but an edless barrrage of noise and whirling CG effects with no point whatsoever. At the end, I was like "What the hell did I just watch?"

CG effects can be used to great effect - like in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I fear most of them are going to waste - used to produce bizarrre visual salads designed to make us stupider.

Sorry for threadjacking & ranting a bit...

[skypilot]

36. I watched the video yesterday...

...and when the screaming and chanting started I felt myself put up an emotional wall. It was not completely successful. I sort of registered the horror of it all and at the same time felt myself steeling myself against that horror. I watched the whole thing and though I didn't have nightmares or anything like that I was just kind of out of sorts for the rest of the day.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

37. Not really desensitized but I can deal with it without being disturbed

I witnessed a murder when I was a teen complete with hearing pleas not to be killed. Listening to the video was worse for me than watching it.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[nolabels]

39. Eat or be eaten, the world ONLY looks demented

I sometimes get angry at uninvited insects coming into the house, and feel the need to get rid of them by putting them out. I have had an invasion of earwig's as of late.

Sometimes I get up in the morning, turn on the light and see one or two running on the kitchen counter. They scurry off when they get discovered (in short they are invaders to my space). When they get cornered by me they get hostile and put up the pincers (but are useless to anything much bigger than them. I catch them then flush them down the toilet to let the septic tank and bacteria to deal with them.

So what do you think they are trying to do in dealing with people that disagree that with them. These people who are of an annoyance but really don't affect them?

Btw. I have no fear that a million or so earwigs are going to overwhelm me and flush me down the toilet

[napi21]

40. I guess it is a form of desensitized. But I watched because

I wanted to see if this appeared to be real. I heard enough in advance to know what I was going to see.

I was more affected by the live video at the WTC, the streets of Pakistan, the streets of Israel, and Ok. City.

I guess my attitude is cruel, but we expect to see horrible things in a war zone....or at least should. The other incidents are "surprise attacks, mostly on innocent people who don't put themselves in the middle of a potentially bad situation.

The abuse of the Iraqi prisoners, and the beheading are all horrible actions by horrible people. I'm ashamed that the US had anything to do with activities like that, but as a country we are willing to go to another country and "hands off" drop bombs, and say WE GOT 'EM. Is anyone so unrealistic that they think blown apart bodies, and dead innocents aren't part of that too?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

41. It creeped me out to no end

And yes, I avoid thinking about much of the shit that goes around in the world (not so much that I get alienated, mind you) or else I think I'd go mad.

[Wapsie B]

42. This was all collateral damage

for chimpy's war on terra. Complete justification for staying there, increasing funding for the invasion forces, and troop buildup as well. I hate feeling this way, but it isn't 1950 anymore where we just blindly believe everything the government tells us.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

44. Monday night I saw Kill Bill Vol 1...

.. and Tuesday, the beheading news came out.

Even after watching the heads roll, the blood fountain & spray, Quentin's 'Roadrunner vs Coyote' violent images........

NEVER ever equated to reality and hearing (never watching) a real person being decapitated.

[Psst_Im_Not_Here]

46. Heartache

I definitely am not sensitized to any of this. Of course, I've always been a bit empathic since childhood. After hearing about the beheading, I even had to call my mother and ask that we talk about anything ANYTHING but what's going on in the world. We talked about laundry and gardening. I still didn't feel quite myself and delved into my music. That always works for me. However, today, the cloud still looms and tears still feel close to the surface.

[sendero]

47. I cannot...

.... and will not watch that video. I don't even have to wonder if I'd have a visceral reaction, I almost have one just reading the descriptions.