Large Fierce Mammal

Let’s begin today’s Dark Sentiment with a word from Agony, courtesy of the inimitable Katy Towell.

A bit of shameless self-promotion on the part of Agony, I agree. We all know that human suffering, as rivetingly horrible as it may be to those experiencing it, and as flavour enhancing as it may be to bystanders with cel phone cameras, usually only has a lasting impact on those directly affected by the events surrounding it. We see evidence of this in people of the current generation snickering through the minute of silence at Remembrance Day ceremonies, the proliferation of Holocaust denial, and teenagers with swastika tattoos, to name but a few examples the average person can find on their own with little effort.

On a world scale we can have friendly relations and do booming business with nations whose governments perpetrate genocide, openly incarcerate or execute people for the crime of loving a person of the same sex, or publicly flog women for having the temerity to drive a car. Business is business and … well … none of that is any of our business. After all, we need Chinese made products to get through every hour of every day, so who cares what they do, or how toxic their factories are?

There is a Flemish proverb that goes, “En de boer hij ploegde voort,” – literally, “And the farmer he ploughed forward,” – used in reference to the normalcy of willful ignorance to the suffering of another. Proving, as if we needed it, that none of this is new news, we see this sentiment graphically expressed in a version of Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, attributed with some controversy to having been painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in 1558. The version I refer to appears below, and a larger, more illustrative version can be viewed here.

For those few of you who’ve never heard of him, Greek mythology relates that Icarus, the son of Master Craftsman Daedalus, escaped Crete by air using wings made by his father out of wax and feathers. Ignoring his father’s advice not to fly too close to the sun, the wax on his wings melted and so he plummeted into the sea where he drowned. Sounds like a Darwin to me, but that’s not today’s point.

Getting back to the painting, you will note that there is a lot happening in it – the Ploughman indeed ploughs on, the Shepherd and his Dog are otherwise engaged, the ship holds to its course – and … oh yes! We can just see the legs of poor, stupid, disobedient, doomed Icarus sticking out of a small splash just to port of the stern of the ship. Even the splash he made is unimpressive, and clearly, nobody else in the picture gives a shit. I might also point out that the Sun appears to be a fair piece away from his trajectory, implying that Icarus might be drowning more because he figuratively stole the keys to dad’s car.

Lisa St Aubin de Terán once wrote, “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.'”

Lest my point be lost, I would never advocate that everyone is, or should be, worthy of your friendship, love, or support. What I reserve my disdain for is the expression of those sentiments retroactively. The gnashing of teeth and rending garments that comes in a tidal wave a day late and a dollar short, echoing hollowly in its tardiness as it so passionately cleaves to its breast a bill that will conveniently never be paid. Refusing to accept the bill in the first place is nobler than accepting it in the hope its purveyor will die before it comes due.

This sets the stage for an upcoming Dark Sentiment that will look at a recent horrific event involving the death of a man and a community’s reaction to it. While I await developments in the case, stay tuned.