I listened to a this American Life Podcast today about living after one's actions may have caused people's deaths and how people cope. It's good story-telling and within the show talked about how people who suffer from post-traumatic stress isolate themselves and become fearful because they feel that they are at the whim of the universe.
At the same time I think that their are people, even highly capable people who suffer under this notion and haven't experienced any traumatic event except perhaps being isolated. My brain made this connection between death and isolation perhaps because I listened to the audio of the Jonestown suicides and thought of the isolation necessary for people needing to gather like this in the first place and the isolation necessary for this to occur.
I shouldn't have listened to the audio, just as I shouldn't have listened to the audio of the 9/11 emergency phone call but I did. It's been awhile since I heard the former but the latter was the day before my previous post. I did these for a sense of understanding, and perhaps because the internet allowed me to be a rubbernecker without slowing down traffic.
I wouldn't forget these recordings easily, not for their content, but for the sinking feeling that I got when I heard them. Part of human nature wants to analyze bad happenings so that they can be prevented in the future. It seems that part of the nature of the web that we can now be not only passive reviewers such as books and video were before but active reviewers of information and events. This allows for incredible advances in hobbies (just look at some evolution of dance videos) but also creates the ability for a person find content that leaves them incredibly cynical.
In any event I think parts of our national conscience are shaped by the time of year, and by our need to remember things so that we can improve or at least attempt to. But there is a need to move on I think and coming back to the ptsd cases shows this.
Sigh
If only life were simple.
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