It's unbelievable, but sadly not uncommon to hear "Again? Another one?" in response to a shooting or a protest or a bombing — as if tragedy is so rampant that it's something that's just become expected.
So much has been brewing on social media — my entire newsfeed is blue, white, and red, as is Instagram, Spotify, Amazon, and more. Paris is everywhere.
After the attacks on Paris, many of my peers brought up the subject, wide-eyed, murmuring under their breaths in shock while scrolling through the "Trending on Facebook," perusing articles, and one friend in particular said something that struck me: "This isn't where you'd imagine something like that happening."
But this is something that can happen anywhere, at any time, and we should have realized it a long time ago, after the Boston marathon, after every school shooting, after every single attack on civilian populations.
Because of Paris, many of us have actually read more than one news article in one sitting for the first time in months, changed our profile pictures, attended vigils, fervently prayed for the well-being of strangers; some of us have had to deal with the losses of family members and close friends, the knowledge of a war-torn home country, while the rest of us can only attempt to empathize, all the while hoping to God we will never be directly affected by such an awful occurrence.
But the fact is, we are always directly impacted — every single one of us, because we need to talk about it and raise awareness, show our support and stand together as a united front.
After the recent events at Yale and Mizzou, many individuals were fired up and took to social media to engage in personal wars over values and principles, triggering lengthy, incendiary comments and even ending some friendships.
Following this barrage of social media battles, a high school classmate posted a particularly relevant status that I found drove the point home perfectly:
there is no such thing as political correctness
there is no such thing as free speech
there is especially no such thing as speech without consequences
there is no such thing as civil discourse
there is no such thing as being "non-racist"
there is no such thing as "race relations"
there is no such thing as "the truth"
there is no such thing as a perfect victim
and there is no such thing as respectable
there is only that which is favorable to power and the euphemisms, as above, in the service of its self-delusion.
there is only the matter of whether certain lives are worthwhile. if you know this, and would still prefer to dismiss the activism of life and death with the same off-handed abstraction as you would employ in the seminar room, you are not an intellectual pursuing justice. you are not talented, you are not special, your opinion is no more valuable than your neighbor's in the reactionary circlejerk. you have an emotional problem, suffered en masse.
I think Paris grounded everyone, because who's going to argue over an unmistakeable tragedy like that? At the end of the day, it's not about whose opinion on culture is correct or otherwise. It's about who values human life and who doesn't.
Humanity has one enemy, and that's anyone who fights against it. That's the people who intentionally and viciously destroy lives in Paris, Beirut, Kenya, Iraq, Lebanon, America. Their reasonings and methods might be different, but in the end their goals are the same — to harm others deliberately. And no one can possibly allow this with good conscience.
France recently requested "aid and assistance by all means in their power" from the European Union's 28 member states. This morning, Federica Mogherini, a EU official, tweeted:
La France a demandé aide et assistance à l'Union Européenne. Et aujourd'hui toute l'Europe unie répond: oui. #Paris
France asked the European Union for help. And today, all of Europe responded: yes. #Paris
"Yes." Stand together. Help one another.
We think we're safe in our bubbles of upper-middle-class privilege, but we're not. And as long as we're not safe, we might as well fight back in whatever way we can, because what else are we going to do? Just settle back in our nonexistent bubbles and watch as the world crumbles around us? Until there is no one left to say anything at all?
If you haven't changed your profile picture, you shouldn't feel guilty. That's only one method of showing support. But keep reading the news, keep others informed, and keep everything in perspective. Remember that you're not living in your own little world, that if someone's livelihood across the country — across the world — is in danger, then so is yours. Distance theoretically means nothing to an entity intent on threatening innocent lives. Anywhere and anyone will suffice.
I was afraid to say anything on this topic because I didn't want to pretend that I know everything there is to know about what happened in Paris. I've never personally experienced such a monumental tragedy, so I can't possibly know what it's like. I have no authority on the subject, one might say — I would say that. But this week, I couldn't bring myself to write about anything other than this. It would have felt wrong to sit down and write about something trivial in the grand scheme of things; my original plan to write an article about loneliness in college somehow made me feel guilty, as if I were ignoring this much larger and actually more relevant issue.
This is just the beginning. It's been "the beginning" for a long time, but I think Paris just might be the end of the beginning. No, it's not the only significant tragedy right now, but it's what catalyzed action and awareness, and pushed people to care. And that's what matters.
This is going somewhere, and we're going to need to stand together every step of the way and be prepared to stop doing nothing.
#Solidarité
