This reponse is due to something Ish posted here, in which he discusses road rage. And also he makes a more recent post called Road Rage Revisited, in which this poignant thought emerged: There are people out there who are trying to kill you, and they're not doing it because they're evil or because they want to take your money or because they hate you. They're doing it because they're 3 minutes late for yoga class, and that, to me, is truly more terrifying than murder.

This got me thinking.

Yes. 40,000 people die a year from car accidents. But what does that mean to me? When I was 18, I was rear-ended twice in 3 weeks. The first accident was minor, however, the second accident was me waiting for a school bus and a truck slamming into my car at 55 mph. Luckily, no bones were broken (I drove a 1964 Buick Skylark, a tank of a automobile), but I still couldn't walk for over a month. This knowledge (that 40,000 people die a year from car accidents) should terrify me. But it doesn't.

Upon further reflection, I have decided that this statistic doesn't scare me because I don't really know what 40,000 people is, even more, I don't know what 40,000 people dying is. There was the Asian tsunami, and entire island populations were wiped out. With headlines like these on local news stations, and on MSNBC, "Over 250,000 people died, including 35 Americans" it's no wonder that I feel disjointed from the numbers and slightly out of touch with reality. And if I feel disconnected from the magnamity of the situation, then I'm sure millions of others are disconnected as well.

Yes. 40,000 people die a year in car crashes. And it truly is scary that no one seems to be afraid of driving. Perhaps some people handle the knowledge with ease because they realize it's a necessity of life, and it's pretty much out of your hands if you need to drive to work every morning. Even if I'm the safest driver, there's about a million other people who are not. And so, every time I get behind the wheel, I am physically putting my life in the hands of my fellow Americans. These are the same people who got Bush re-elected, and these are the same people I wouldn't trust to babysit my cat, but I'm suddenly trusting these same people with my life. The sad thing is that even though I realize this, I know that most people probably do not think about it in such a way. And yet, I trust them anyway. I have no other choice.

I often think that our society does not deal with death in a serious way. When I'm watching Total Recall on the WB, like I was earlier this evening, I get bummed out that they won't show my beloved governor, Arnold, shooting Sharon Stone in the head. I remember that bullet hole being so perfectly formed, and it's a crime against the special effects make-up department to not air that footage. I could blame the violence in movies, television and video games for desensitizing the American public. But the fact still remains that Americans, as a whole, do not take death seriously. The only time it is taken seriously is in war movies, or during war-time, and even those deaths take on a life of their own.

War deaths are glamorous. Remember Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump? Every single male member of his family fought in every major war and died. It was supposed to be an honor. That is the kind of propaganda our heads are filled with on a daily basis. "3 more GIs were killed in Iraq? What? One of them was from Long Beach! Dear lord, that's a tragedy! What a hero! What a martyr! Well, at least he was fighting the good fight. For freedom!" It reads like a bad Irish toast.

When it comes to deaths of loved ones, how are we supposed to react? How are we supposed to cope, and grieve, and mourn? We don't know. Now talk about 40,000 strangers. Or even better, how about 250,000 foreign strangers. How are we supposed to react? Are we supposed to grieve? Are we supposed to mourn? But let's say we do mourn, let's say we do shed a tear out of sympathy for the loss of life, and *gasp* that tear is shed in public! What is the public reaction? I can tell you. I was at the grocery store and a lady walked by and said, "Quick yer crying. You've got nothing to be sad about!" and she proceeded for, oh, about 20 more seconds along those lines. I was dumbstruck. And believe me, she wasn't reprimanding me in a "Cheer up!" sort of fashion.

America is a melting pot of culture, and we don't have a foundational culture that unites us as a whole, or inparts moral wisdom, the way most countries have their own specific culture. Culture is what you, your family, or your community believes in, cherishes, and holds sacred. The problem is that even the special ones (the ones who actually have a culture), even those traditions get absorbed over time. (For instance, right now it's very trendy to be Indian in Hollywood.)

As a people, we are not really united at all. And I think that perhaps the corporations like it that way. If we all had a stronger belief system, or a uniting factor behind us, we would not be as susceptible to consumerism. I think the conglomerates realized this a long time ago, and have taken a "Divide and Conquer" approach. It's easier to market to people who have no built-in belief structures. Heck, for some people, marketing is their belief structure. It makes Star Wars Episode 3 a whole lot easier to sell that way.

Americans don't realize it, but we're in a war every single day of our lives. It's a silent war. It's a subtle war. Instead of a noisy war in Iraq, there is saturated fat and sodium clogging my arteries and product placement in television that brainwashes me. How will my death be mourned? Will it be mourned at all? Will my loved ones know how to mourn? Will they understand that I will never be walking, talking and playing Katamari Damacy again?

Until that day, I have to just have to get in my car and hope...

( 2comments )

at February 27, 2005 10:16 PM  Ish said...

You'd have been welcome to write it as a comment, but I like it better here where more people will see it.

Really American culture *is* the consumer culture. And we're exporting it around the world.

Thanks for your thoughts and this post.

 

at February 28, 2005 2:25 AM  Samantha said...

You know, you're right. America does have a culture. Consumerism. It's the only culture we've developed as a whole. Wow. That is so depressing.