Leon the tourguide

Leon the tourguide
Leon the Tour Guide

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Telling about catastrophes

What's the point of retelling tragedy? The media describes an untold number of tragedies, every day, in great detail, in pictures, films, words and sounds. For example; Thousands of people die in an earthquake and in the flash of a second every person with a radio, TV or newspaper knows about the tragedy in great detail. Even greater detail than the people actually involved in the tragedy. Tragedy, in modern times has two aspects; Vividness and Vastness. Vividness of the description of the tragedy and vastness of the audience who gets to know about it. We can add a third aspect, namely; Velocity. That is the speed with with which the vast audience recieves the vivid description.
These three aspects of tragedy can be summed up in a word, namely; Impact. Each day you can open the news and get shocked.
Getting shocked, however, doesn't bring any thought or action.

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