One of the characteristics of western civilisation is its sanitisation. My sanitisation I mean the desire and ability to hide things which are difficult to cope with. I suspect that the rise of sanitisation began in the early 19th century in Victorian England where there was a desire to regularise the unpleasant and uncomfortable things in society. It started before that, and I suppose there has always been a desire, more or less, to sanitise the uncomfortable but we have almost achieved a state of societal perfection at hiding the unpleasant.
We have done this by creating institutions to hide all the unpleasant things in society, employing a special caste of people to deal with these difficult things and then pretending that they do not exist. The media has been complicit in this by romanticising these unpleasantries to make these things easier to cope with. Even our language has been sanitised.
What I am talking about is death, disease – both physical and mental, procreation, bodily functions and human aberrance. We have created institutions for each of these in order to rid ourselves of the personal responsibility of them and to hide them from view. We have commissioned people to staff these institutions and deal with the unpleasantness for us.
Last night I watched a documentary on the Twin Towers disaster in the US and more specifically on the “Falling Man†image that appeared in newspapers the next day. Following the publication of that image there was a huge outcry against its publication. As they were discussing the reaction it seemed to me that the problem was that the general population of the US were in denial. The concept of people having to jump to their deaths was expunged from the public record. Instead of admitting its existence it was replaced with the more heroic aspects of the tragedy. There were heroes yes, but we are more ordinary people that heroes and even our heroes are flawed people. To admit this is wisdom not weakness.
This is a result of the syndrome of the institutionalisation of tragedy. We construct memorials to the heroes and forget the ordinary people who could not cope – the rest of us. We lock them away in hospitals, psychiatric homes, gaols and conveniently forget them. We employ firemen, paramedics, doctors, nurses, funeral attendants and police to deal with them and hide them for us. The media is complicit in this. It censors, sanitises, packages and then presents these nice little bite sized packages for our consumption. We have a criminal, an investigation, then a court hearing all conveniently summarised in a 1 hour (excluding promotions) program for our enjoyment. Then there is the genius doctor who, when faced with the most obscure, baffling and complex case can solve it in exactly – oh well … one hour, and he gets these regularly in weekly intervals. But they are never too distressing or gory. Then there are the journalists. The professional liars if you will. Am I being too harsh? Maybe but we ask nay expect them to lie to us. This is what we have demanded from journalists and they faithfully oblige.
We have come a long way in the last 200 years. We no longer maintain workhouses and treadmills, but in some ways the situation is worse. Because the gross inhumanity has been ameliorated our consciences have been sated and we feel far more comfortable.