Death Watch

“Wanna see this video of the woman getting shot?”

 

This was the question my 15-year-old asked me on the day the rioters stormed the Capital building in Washington, D.C.

 

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to watch someone die.”

 

I’ve never wanted to watch someone die but for my daughter’s generation and for most other people, watching people die on live streaming video feeds is normal.

 

I asked my daughter how she felt about it and the answer was nothing. Watching someone die in real life but on the screen was no different to her than watching a movie or TV character die on screen. And that scares me.

 

The first time I ever saw someone die on TV was in 1986. I was 12 years old and the space shuttle blew up as we watched the first teacher launch into space; except she didn’t.

 

I don’t think I saw the launch in real time, but I did see it on the news later that day and I have never forgotten what it felt like to see the moment when human triumph turned to tragedy – when lives were lost while the world watched.

 

Before that time, I don’t think I had ever knowingly seen a person die on screen. We always had the television news on when I was a kid, but I don’t think the sensibilities of the time allowed them to broadcast unfiltered death.

 

Since then there have been many mass casualties and singular deaths available for consumption on TV and computer screens. Watching them, often on repeat, has made people both numb to the truth of death and scared of the world.

 

On September 11, 2001 I was in Bangkok, living in a small apartment. I had no television; in fact, I had given up television in 1997. But I heard the news, I saw a picture of the smoke pouring out of the twin towers in a newspaper; I have never watched the footage of that horrible day.

 

Watching thousands of people die on the 24-hour news cycle of CNN that day, and in the days that followed, did something to America. I felt it on my first visit back to the States and I still can’t put my finger on exactly what you’d say that something was –but they’ve been watching death ever since.

 

More recently society has watched the live streaming deaths of Philando Castile, Floyd George, and those that died during the Christchurch mosque attack. There are more, but I don’t watch them. It can’t be good to watch these things. Depending on the person; watching death on the small screen either reduces the humanity of those that die or creates despair for humanity in the viewer.

 

These days whenever there is a major disaster; created either by nature or humankind, a quote from Fred Rogers fills social media, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

 

I would add a postscript to that advice: Stop looking. And I don’t mean we should bury our collective heads in the sand but that we should not traumatize and or desensitize ourselves to the death of others by watching it on repeat like some crazy cat video.

 

I am still fascinated by space and the voyage toward discovery. And while there’s hardly ever a launch covered in the mainstream news anymore, I do livestream launches and watch them with my children.

They watch with anticipation; I watch with anticipation and dread. I cry with relief when the launch is complete; the astronauts beyond the force of gravity.  I watch knowing that I might see someone die, not because I know I will.