HUMAN beings can actually be perceived and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external [our] concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilised nations.
It’s like an immoral consideration of “quality of life”.
The inhuman(e) devaluation is especially observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in prolongedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken regions.
This effect is likely exacerbated when there is racial contrast between the news consumer and news subject.
Therefore, when that life is lost, even violently, it can receive less coverage.
In other words, the worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the extended conditions [that is, usually years] under which it suffers and/or perishes; and those people can then receive comparably meagre coverage in the West’s daily news.
For example, with each news report of the daily death toll from unrelenting bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitisation and resignation.
I have noticed this disturbing effect with all major protracted conflicts internationally, including present Ukraine, since I began regularly consuming news products in 1987.
- Africa is paying dearly for the Russian/Ukraine conflict
- Power cuts: Zesa sleeping on duty
- ‘School of funeral assurers a priority’
- What if nations fail on climate change adaptation?
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And I do not think I am alone in feeling this nor that it is wilfully callous.
Assuming I am not alone in feeling this, I say we all can still resist such flawed yet normalised human nature thus behaviour. - Frank Sterle Jr
