Emotional correctness post-9/11
I didn't post this yesterday because everyone and their brother was posting about 9/11 and I posted that artwork and that was all I wanted to do.
Yesterday on one of my Brokeback forums, a reader posted these thoughts about the concept of "emotional correctness":
“Emotional correctness” is a variation on political correctness, in which people feel that peer pressure demands they react in a certain way. In an article on the “Cult of Diana”, Matt Cherry wrote: “Emotions-gone-religious seems to have taken place with the mass expression of grief at the death of [Princess] Diana. Public reinforcement of emotions usually kept private seemed to encourage ever more hysterical declarations of adoration and loss. A secular event was made sacred. Death can let emotion gain control over all reason.”
Writing soon after Diana’s death Mick Hume wrote: “Britons are feeding their own egos by indulging in 'recreational grief' for murdered children and dead celebrities they have never met. Mourning sickness is a substitute for religion. The media preachers of emotional correctness issued two commandments in the aftermath of Diana's death. First, thou shalt weep and wail. The word from the editorial offices was that everybody from the Queen downwards had to soften that stiff upper lip and show their emotions in public. The obligation was to hug strangers, wear a ribbon, light a candle so turning the world into one big Oprah studio where audience participation was obligatory. Second, thou shalt weep together to keep together. Only one kind of emotion was to be allowed, in order for the nation to be seen to be united on its collective knees. The clear message was that if you were not grieving the way the editorial-writers said we all were, then you should put on a front of ersatz emotion and play the part anyway. The end result was a 'tyranny of grief'.
“This coercive side of emotional correctness was never far behind the flowers and the touchy-feely stuff. In seeking to impose their code of emotional correctness from the top of society downwards, much of the media abandoned reporting in favour of preaching, replacing any notion of public debate with a demand for national unity. You do not have to be a fan of the House of Windsor to worry at the implications of the assumption of such moral authority by the media. On the morning of Diana's funeral, at least one man was reportedly beaten up outside his home for showing disrespect by daring to wash his car.”
This made me think about our post 9/11 grief. I'm not suggesting that people's continuing grief isn't real or valid, but there is a kind of societal expectation that all of us mourn in a similar way, or that we mourn at all. We saw this in a big way right afterwards in the huge upswell of patriotic sentiment and the total quashing of any dissenting opinions or attempts to speak in a pragmatic fashion about the attack. I remember the reaction to Susan Sontag's essay in "The New Yorker" in which she pointed out that while the attacks were horrific, our government HAD done things to draw the hatred of a large number of people and that we couldn't expect to live in a bubble of safety forever.
On 9/11, I was terribly upset, as I'm sure most of us were. Now? I look back on the event and I feel...not much. I don't get emotional watching Discovery specials about the attacks, I don't feel a continuing sense of loss or dread. Many of my friends have said that they're not "ready" to see any of the films now being made on the subject. I didn't see either "United 93" or "World Trade Center," but it wasn't because I had an emotional reason to avoid them, I simply wasn't that interested and I haven't been going to all that many movies lately.
What I do feel is anger over what these attacks have been used to justify by our government. I feel upset that so many of my fellow citizens have used the attacks to justify an attitude of willful blindness about what's going on here, and what we're involved with over there. I feel incredulous at the total breakdown of intelligence that no one saw this coming, or if they did, nothing was done.
Am I a bad, coldhearted person because I can no longer muster the grief to cry over those deaths? Sometimes I feel like one. But I know myself, and it's in my personality to get over stuff. I don't tend to hang on to strong emotions. At the time, I wept, I grieved, I was scared, and I was angry. But I got over it, and now I don't really feel much. I can say that the attacks were terrible, and the loss of life was tragic, and it was...but I no longer experience those things as potent, visceral emotional responses.
The point of the passage I quoted above is that there is an expectation that I should still be devastated. I don't tend to talk about my post-9/11 feelings, mostly because I'm afraid people will think I'm some kind of freak.
People grieve in different ways. Some prefer to do their emoting in total privacy. Others would rather participate in giant candelight vigils. Some, like me, react by distancing ourselves. All of these expressions are valid. But participation in the "emotionally correct" version of post-9/11 grief feels so mandatory sometimes. I ought to post a heartfelt essay or reiterate Where I Was for the eightieth time or express the desire to hug everyone I love while I shed new tears for the victims.
I can't do any of those things. Maybe there was something left out of me that I can't find that emotionality of sadness inside me after five years and all that's left is the more academic sadness of the same kind that I feel for any historical loss of life, like the Inquisition or the Rape of Nanking.
I'm really putting myself out there right now. I've never really talked about this. Sometimes I wish I could still feel things as potently as others seem to...but mostly, I'm glad that I'm wired this way. I don't know if I could deal with such strong feelings on such an ongoing basis.
Yesterday on one of my Brokeback forums, a reader posted these thoughts about the concept of "emotional correctness":
“Emotional correctness” is a variation on political correctness, in which people feel that peer pressure demands they react in a certain way. In an article on the “Cult of Diana”, Matt Cherry wrote: “Emotions-gone-religious seems to have taken place with the mass expression of grief at the death of [Princess] Diana. Public reinforcement of emotions usually kept private seemed to encourage ever more hysterical declarations of adoration and loss. A secular event was made sacred. Death can let emotion gain control over all reason.”
Writing soon after Diana’s death Mick Hume wrote: “Britons are feeding their own egos by indulging in 'recreational grief' for murdered children and dead celebrities they have never met. Mourning sickness is a substitute for religion. The media preachers of emotional correctness issued two commandments in the aftermath of Diana's death. First, thou shalt weep and wail. The word from the editorial offices was that everybody from the Queen downwards had to soften that stiff upper lip and show their emotions in public. The obligation was to hug strangers, wear a ribbon, light a candle so turning the world into one big Oprah studio where audience participation was obligatory. Second, thou shalt weep together to keep together. Only one kind of emotion was to be allowed, in order for the nation to be seen to be united on its collective knees. The clear message was that if you were not grieving the way the editorial-writers said we all were, then you should put on a front of ersatz emotion and play the part anyway. The end result was a 'tyranny of grief'.
“This coercive side of emotional correctness was never far behind the flowers and the touchy-feely stuff. In seeking to impose their code of emotional correctness from the top of society downwards, much of the media abandoned reporting in favour of preaching, replacing any notion of public debate with a demand for national unity. You do not have to be a fan of the House of Windsor to worry at the implications of the assumption of such moral authority by the media. On the morning of Diana's funeral, at least one man was reportedly beaten up outside his home for showing disrespect by daring to wash his car.”
This made me think about our post 9/11 grief. I'm not suggesting that people's continuing grief isn't real or valid, but there is a kind of societal expectation that all of us mourn in a similar way, or that we mourn at all. We saw this in a big way right afterwards in the huge upswell of patriotic sentiment and the total quashing of any dissenting opinions or attempts to speak in a pragmatic fashion about the attack. I remember the reaction to Susan Sontag's essay in "The New Yorker" in which she pointed out that while the attacks were horrific, our government HAD done things to draw the hatred of a large number of people and that we couldn't expect to live in a bubble of safety forever.
On 9/11, I was terribly upset, as I'm sure most of us were. Now? I look back on the event and I feel...not much. I don't get emotional watching Discovery specials about the attacks, I don't feel a continuing sense of loss or dread. Many of my friends have said that they're not "ready" to see any of the films now being made on the subject. I didn't see either "United 93" or "World Trade Center," but it wasn't because I had an emotional reason to avoid them, I simply wasn't that interested and I haven't been going to all that many movies lately.
What I do feel is anger over what these attacks have been used to justify by our government. I feel upset that so many of my fellow citizens have used the attacks to justify an attitude of willful blindness about what's going on here, and what we're involved with over there. I feel incredulous at the total breakdown of intelligence that no one saw this coming, or if they did, nothing was done.
Am I a bad, coldhearted person because I can no longer muster the grief to cry over those deaths? Sometimes I feel like one. But I know myself, and it's in my personality to get over stuff. I don't tend to hang on to strong emotions. At the time, I wept, I grieved, I was scared, and I was angry. But I got over it, and now I don't really feel much. I can say that the attacks were terrible, and the loss of life was tragic, and it was...but I no longer experience those things as potent, visceral emotional responses.
The point of the passage I quoted above is that there is an expectation that I should still be devastated. I don't tend to talk about my post-9/11 feelings, mostly because I'm afraid people will think I'm some kind of freak.
People grieve in different ways. Some prefer to do their emoting in total privacy. Others would rather participate in giant candelight vigils. Some, like me, react by distancing ourselves. All of these expressions are valid. But participation in the "emotionally correct" version of post-9/11 grief feels so mandatory sometimes. I ought to post a heartfelt essay or reiterate Where I Was for the eightieth time or express the desire to hug everyone I love while I shed new tears for the victims.
I can't do any of those things. Maybe there was something left out of me that I can't find that emotionality of sadness inside me after five years and all that's left is the more academic sadness of the same kind that I feel for any historical loss of life, like the Inquisition or the Rape of Nanking.
I'm really putting myself out there right now. I've never really talked about this. Sometimes I wish I could still feel things as potently as others seem to...but mostly, I'm glad that I'm wired this way. I don't know if I could deal with such strong feelings on such an ongoing basis.