Sunday March 19, 2023

TV can be a cruel medium. Long ago, when I still thought I would earn a doctorate in English literature, I read a theory about the evolution of literature. Essentially, it argued that literature had slowly, steadily, but irreversibly shifted from the perspective of the aggressor to the perspective of the victim.
From the hunter, to the hunted.
The first stories and histories all lauded the conqueror. His strength, his power, his ruthlessness.
And then gradually, literature started portraying the other sid: King Lear, blinded and abandoned. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Anne Frank, hiding in a wall. The orphaned Oliver Twist.
We learned to see through the eyes of a slave, a woman, a child – even a cat or a rabbit.
And then TV reversed that evolution. Instead of experiencing what it’s like to be shot, the camera looks through the eyes of the shooter.
As viewer, you are behind the weapon, not in front of it.
Oh, yes, you can see the bullet hit. You see the victim crumple. But you never feel the bullet hit you, the building fall on you, the cancer grow in you. In medical shows, you’re the surgeon slicing into a body; you’re never the body being sliced open
When news covers earthquakes and landslides, you see from the perspective of the rescuers, tearing into the rubble to pull out another victim; you’re never under the rubble…

The super-cyclone
I became aware of this again this last week, as TV news cameras covered the disaster caused by Cyclone Freddy in Malawi.
Weather experts call Freddy the strongest tropical storm ever.
Cyclone Freddy started somewhere near north-western Australia. It gathered strength and moisture across 8000 km of sun-warmed Indian Ocean. By the time it hit the African coast, according to Reuters News, this one storm contained the total energy in a typical year of all – repeat, ALL – North Atlantic hurricanes combined!
Reuters said that “Freddy holds the record for most accumulated cyclone energy, based on a storm's wind strength over its lifetime, of any storm in the southern hemisphere and possibly worldwide.”
Freddy blasted across the island of Madagascar, then slammed into Mozambique on the coast, which got a whole year’s worth of rain in four weeks.
But then, instead of dissipating itself inland, Freddie turned back out over the Indian Ocean, absorbed more energy from an overheated sea, and took another run at the African continent.
This time it roared into Malawi.

Where’zat?
I suspect that when you hear the name “Malawi,” you draw a blank. Who? Where?
People of my age might have first heard of Malawi as Nyasaland, a British colony established by David Livingstone in 1858.
On the world stage, Malawi has few other claims to fame. It’s one of the least developed countries in Africa – a dubious honour. It has no natural resources to market to the world. It’s a landlocked nation about twice the size of Nova Scotia, but with 20 million people.
I am not an expert on Malawi. But I have actually been there, which is more than 99% of the world can say.
I went there 50 years ago, as a volunteer for Crossroads Canada, to help a group of local churches develop publicity materials for their service programs.
I loved Malawi. I loved the friendliness of the people. I loved its mountains, its highlands, the 600-km sparkling lake filling its Great Rift Valley.
I swam in that lake. I waded across rivers. I camped on beaches. I watched women carry buckets of water, on their heads, from a distant spring to their village. I watched men water tree seedlings, to renew a forest. I wandered through its markets.
Sadly, I didn’t love it enough to go back.

Observing from safety
But now I look at video of torrents raging down gullies. Mud-brick houses crumbing. Fields flooded. Children buried to their necks in mud.
I see desperate people using shovels, sticks, their bare hands, trying to clear debris. I see crops swept away, schools destroyed, roads severed. And my heart hurts.
Malawi lists over 200 deaths. Plus unknown missing. Hospitals beg families to take bodies away for burial – morgues overflow.
And I’m reminded once again that I see all this from a safe viewpoint, behind the camera.
We do not, and cannot, see or feel what it’s like to be swept away by a flash flood. Or to be buried in mud. Or to run from a landslide bearing down on you.
Because video cameras do not go there.
We observe the story dispassionately from a safe and superior position.

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Copyright © 2023 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn

In last week’s column about the interference of computer surveillance in our lives, I mentioned saying “Hey, Siri!” to my cell phone.
Ted Spencer admitted also talking to his phone: “Usually to set a timer so that the potatoes don’t boil over. Does Big Brother note that for future reference? Perhaps.”

Robert Caughell puts his suspicions onto practice, “I do not talk to my laptop/cell phone, and I cover my laptop camera with a piece of paper.”

Tom Watson wondered, “How about those phone calls we get where there's only silence when we answer? What information are they picking up? Add to that, the ability of sham callers to clone phone numbers so that it appears the call might be coming from someone you know. A week ago, I answered what appeared to be a local call and was met with silence. Over the next two hours, I received 11 additional phone calls, all appearing to be from local numbers.”

Vera Gottlieb: “Back in the year 2000, when infamous Y2K ‘virus’ came about…I had purchased my very first computer and heard about Facebook for the very first time. My gut feeling told me immediately that FB was here to spy on us.
“The day might come when we even have to suspect the innocuous roll of toilet paper.”

Here’s a bit more from Ted Spencer: “Observations such as yours (or are they warnings?) are always welcome; thank you for them. Recently I read that ‘Despots rarely seize power. They are given power.’ (Sorry, I can’t remember who wrote that.) If ever there were cases of despots being given power, they are certainly these guys who invented these pervasive social media platforms. In so doing, they’ve accumulated wealth and power in excess of many of the world’s nations, and people can’t get enough of it. Who is to blame: the guy who makes the deadly Koolaid or the guy who willingly drinks it?”

Steve Roney: Trudeau’s proposed investigations and ‘special rapporteur’ are not, as you say, into Canada’s digital vulnerability. They are into claimed Chinese government interference in Canadian elections, mostly and perhaps entirely by non-digital means.”