From Gallows to Guillotines: Lack of Empathy for Titan Victims is Dangerously Robespierre-ian
We need to tread very carefully, before people start reassembling guillotines
The announcement of tragic events are, more often than not, followed by an instant billowing of jokes, puns and dark humour, cackling through workplaces, schools, pubs, and across social media. The phenomenon is nothing new, and no death, crime or situation is immune to it. It's called 'Gallows Humour', and has been a coping mechanism for people in life and death situations for as long as...well, as long as humour has been recorded. It has been found in such extreme places as the Gulags of Russia and the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Here in Blighty, dark humour finds its roots in the working and lower classes, spanning the ages, from the grimness of the Middle Ages to modern Industrial city life.
Kids love gallows humour, as anyone who has seen them giggle and revile in equal measures whilst watching Horrible Histories can attest to. To make light of very dark stories is not to disrespect them, rather to alleviate the depressing aspects of life through jokes, and in children to instil a fascination of history, without making them lose hope of it all. There is nothing more gallows humour than Horrible Histories’ Stupid Deaths segments, in which Death asks the recently departed how they died, before laughing uncontrollably at those who met a comedically unfortunate demise.
Still, none of this is about removing empathy, as some people often think. "They’re not mocking the victims" says Judith Matloff of Psychology Today, "they’re trying not to feel shaken by gruesome sights. That’s what people do in situations of extremis when they feel profoundly unnerved. Comedy doesn’t go away at times of death. It just takes a macabre turn." When popular children's television star Rod Hull (of the Emu puppet fame) died after falling from his roof while fixing the aerial. Within the hour, people were texting around "What has four legs and goes 'shhhh'? Rod Hull's telly." I chortled, with no ill will to the poor man or his family. If it was me who met such an untimely end, I'd like to think I'd be laughing with people from beyond the grave.
We either laugh or we don't laugh at black comedy. Some people do find it bad taste, and yes, some people can just be horrible and get off on the demise of other people’s misery. Regardless, for the most part we all agree to disagree on humour, as differences in taste. At no point do we have to justify or defend why we make jokes about sensitive issues. They're just jokes. Nor do we play the politics card when we're accused of bad taste. Yet this is exactly what has happened recently over the awful tragedy of the Titan submersible.
Sub Standard
When news first broke that the sub was missing, jokes began circulating around social media—nothing abnormal there. However once it was confirmed that the crew were dead, criticisms of these jokes being in bad taste were suddenly addressed not as a matter of taste in humour, but politically, declaring in no uncertain terms that we should not feel sad over the death of those people who died in the Titan, because they're wealthy. Why should we care?
"friction between regular people and the ultra wealthy is fostering genuine hate. And I don't think it's unjustified. Why would the average man mourn the death of a billionaire...?"
Why should we mourn? Because they were human beings. Real live flesh and blood humans, with family, friends, hopes, dreams, thoughts and memories. They loved, and were loved in kind, guilty of nothing other than being very rich. We should mourn them perhaps not in the way we mourn our loved ones, because we never knew these people, but still feel bad for their untimely end. It is no less a tragedy. And even if we don't mourn–and some don’t, we certainly shouldn’t weaponise their deaths as some sociopolitical rally for greater wealth distribution. That to me takes things towards an altogether more sinister path.
For a start, using the term 'average man' is a giveaway. Who are these meme makers to speak for me? I can speak for myself, thank you. Secondly, if by 'average man' they mean the working classes, then we mourn rich people all the time. Footballers, athletes, Rock Stars, actors. People empathise, and put ourselves in the shoes of these people's families. Wealth has nothing to do with it.
It really is concerning to see this kind of victim mentality once again start to poison the well. How dare we devalue the life of human beings so frivolously, just to pursue a political goal. These people were someone's brother, father, partner or son. One of them was just 19 years old. A boy. What if it was your child, parent or husband? And how would you feel if you had to read such hurtful, spiteful, vindictive and arrogant comments online? Has bitterness and victim mentality really replaced compassion and empathy in today's society? It seems so. We intellectualise hatred behind a guise of warped class ideologies— a mentality of 'we are poor and they are not. We want what they have, but we can't have it'.
The 'it's not fair' brigade spitting on the graves of innocent people who have lost their lives in a terrible manner. People guilty of the crime of having more money.
It wasn't so long ago that we were saying 'be kind'. When did that cease to be relevant? Or what about all the other virtuosity that gets paraded on social media: Pride Month, Black History Month, Mental Health Awareness Week? These issues are supposed to be striving towards equality. So tell me, do wealthy people not struggle with these same issues? If you prick them, do they not bleed? Indeed, people have condemned the rich as Shylocks, and are frothing at the chops for their pound of flesh, not noticing their own hypocritical mistreatments. Caring about issues only as long as they fit a certain demographic—in this case, financial. That doesn't work.
Altruism doesn't come with caveats. You care or you don't care. Anything else is hollow virtue signalling: shallow, disingenuous social posturing.
Once again I ask: What does this meme mean by 'the average man'? If we are average, then what are they? Above average? Below average? Don't call the working classes average. We are more than that. We are strong, passionate, resilient and street smart. We can smell a rat a mile away, and this meme has that old familiar murid stench. I don't believe a working class person made this meme. This to me reeks of that old devil called propaganda...
Thanks a Milien, Max
"There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man...We must exterminate all our enemies." - Maximilien de Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre was a lawyer and statesman who, during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror dominated the Committee of Public Safety between September 5, 1793, and July 27, 1794. According to Britannica,
"The committee exercised virtual dictatorial control over the French government. It targeted and systematically executed perceived enemies of the Revolution. In all, the committee oversaw some 17,000 official executions."
The Reign of Terror didn't start as a bloodbath. It was a gradual frogmarch of otherisation, dividing up France into smaller and smaller parts until the virtues of yesterdays policies were annulled by fear and hysteria, leaving two sides: Us and Them.
The wealth and corruption of the French aristocracy lay at the very heart of the Revolution. The upper and noble classes were absolutely corrupt and hoarded all the money from the people. Something had to be done. What followed however was nothing virtuous or noble. It was the execution of over 17,000 people. And in order to justify it, the upper classes first had to br dehumanised. But it was never enough. It never is. Then, after the upper classes were executed, the blame and fear trickled down, first to the middle classes, artists, writers, anyone who displayed anything which appeared–or could be construed as bourgeoisie. More and more tenuously the blame was shifted, with Robespierre front-and-centre (himself signing the death warrants of over 500 people). What was initially promised as wealth distribution turned to violence sanitised and justified as 'divine violence', aimed only towards the few who held the money. The French Revolution was one of the grizzliest episodes in modern history.
"Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts." - Maximilien de Robespierre
How chilling those words are. In a society which is terrified of the fictional futures of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, it is the reoccurrence of the factual past which I fear the most, and the repeating dangers of ideology that seems to mar every generation in recorded history.
It is vital not to fall into the trap of allowing our frustration at the growing class divide to dehumanise those who we are told are our enemy. They are not our enemy. They are our fellow humans. We need to keep our heads firmly in the realm of reason, not emotion. Because there is no such thing as ‘divine violence’ or ‘justified hatred’. Robespierre's monumental role in the Reign of Terror ultimately proved his own words to be fallacious. He, along with a dozen of his followers were,
“condemned to death by the rules of the law of 22 Prairial, one of the laws introduced during the Terror with Robespierre’s approval. He was beheaded by the guillotine, and reportedly the crowd cheered for a solid 15 minutes following his execution.” - Sarah Roller, History Hit.
Robespierre’s only saving grace was his pivotal role in the abolition of slavery, so I suppose we should commend him for that.
Let’s not allow gallows humour be bastardised and reappropriated as a basis for a bloody revolution. We need to tread very carefully, before people start reassembling guillotines.
Cheers for reading.
References
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crisis-control/202006/in-praise-gallows-humor