Very interesting. I experienced a surreal feeling yesterday. I used the word "resensitized" to describe it. I was reading the stories and watching the videos of the attacks in Paris, and reacting like I usually do. Asking why, feeling a little nauseous, and then trying to shake it. Which may seem like an appropriate reaction, but the fact that it was able to slip from my mind, that I was able to even temporarily shake it. Within 30 minutes of seeing the carnage, I'm watching gifs of puppies and slam dunks. Not forgotten, but the trauma from seeing the carnage is able to fade fairly quickly now.
Now to the "resensitizing" part. So I turn on my PS4 and fire up GTAV. Normally when I play this game, I just blow shit up, randomly kill people, cops, create carnage. So I load up the game, and go through some muscle memory type routine and before I know it I "look up" and I'm mowing down pedestrians with a Kalashnikov. I dropped the controller in my lap and felt very nauseous.
Now I've played these type of "shoot em up" video games since I was probably 7-8 years old. I'm not a violent person at all, but I'm definitely desensitized to violence in general. Yet here I am feeling utterly disgusted at this game. That I'm sitting here in my safe apartment with this super-computer-gaming-box and my 55" flat screen in some virtual world invented so people like me can "escape" our boring, safe lives and be entertained by this violence, because we're often separated from it that it isn't real to us.
But as I see these video game pedestrians falling into piles of blood, I feel sick with remorse and guilt. I drop the controller and glance down at my hands, almost an instinctual "what have I done" motion. I asked how someone could hold a real gun and shoot at real people as they scream and beg for mercy, and have zero hesitation, zero compassion, zero anything other than focus. Focus on hurting defenseless, innocent people, in the name of "avenging the killing of our defenseless innocent people."
So I turn off the PS4. My girlfriend suggests watching Mockingjay Part 1, as we hadn't seen it yet and the last film in the series releases next weekend. I didn't even stop to think that the movie was full of action/violence/death. So within the first 15 minutes of the film, images of the heavily armed soldiers mowing down unarmed civilians flood the screen. Again, the instantaneous and intense nausea.
Once again, our "entertainment" depicts images we write off as "pretend" or "fiction" derived from someone's imagination.
I guess all of this means that those individuals responsible for the attacks succeeded in at least one of their goals. Because I am absolutely terrified. Terrified that humanity's apparent inability to put aside creed nor greed has made this a world fueled by blood and dollars. Terrified that it seems that the influx of these jihadists will never decrease, only increase. And that there isn't really a solution in sight.
Honestly, this event has left a bigger mark on me than 9/11. I was only 11 years old at that time, and wasn't mature enough to grasp what had happened and really be afraid and hurt by it. Now I'm 25 and just about figured out who I am at my core, and it's just been shaken. Not changed, but shaken. I can't fight terrorism directly, I feel I can't realistically affect policy in my country directly (at least not immediately), but I swear from this day on that I'll do my best to be as kind and compassionate to every person I encounter each day.