We inevitably seek reassurance in the face of the terrible killings in Cumbria
THERE ARE two types of stories which editors, particularly tabloid editors or producers, love to see come along because they are guaranteed to sell newspapers or attract viewers and listeners.
The first type of story emerges when ordinary events happen in the lives of out-of-the-ordinary people. We often get dramatic headlines and graphic detail about celebrity diets and celebrity nights out and saw many stories of late about celebrity marriage break-ups.
The second type of story concerns out-of-the-ordinary events happening to so-called ordinary people. Occasionally these stories deal with good things such as an act of heroism, a lotto win or some other tale of good fortune. More often than not, however, such stories emerge when something horrific or tragic occurs such as when a child goes missing or is abducted, when some freak accident or natural disaster occurs, or when a murder or suicide or murder-suicide visits death on a family or community.
While the interest of your average reader, viewer or listener in either story could be explained by idle curiosity or voyeurism, there may also be a deeper psychological or emotional explanation for the public’s wish or need to follow such stories in close detail. When ordinary things happen to extraordinary people a smug or envious streak sees us derive some perverse pleasure out of seeing that those who appear more glamorous or fortunate than us are actually just like us.
In the second category of stories the opposite is the case. We find ourselves seeking some detail or information which separates us from those ordinary people involved in the horrific or tragic tale. We need to reassure ourselves that the terrible thing that has happened to someone just like us couldn’t happen to us – ever.
So instead of accepting that sometimes bad things can happen to good people, we strive to distance ourselves from the facts and circumstances of the tragedy and distinguish ourselves from the victims. This is why, when we read of a child going missing, in our own minds we seek to blame the parents and reassure ourselves that we would never leave our child alone unsupervised and therefore our child could not and will not be abducted. Or maybe we go further and convince ourselves that in fact the parents themselves harmed the child, safe in the knowledge that we would never commit such an act and therefore we are insulated from the pain and loss of losing a child in this way. We hang on any detail which will reassure us that our child could not become the random victim of a stranger attack or abduction.
Finding anyone to blame assists us in a quest for that comforting feeling that this same tragedy could not befall us, our families or our community. Instead of acknowledging that random and unexpected acts of violence can be committed by otherwise ordinary, or apparently well people we seek to blame the social services, the health system or the police, legislation or firearms licensing regimes.
The need for reassurance is greater when the scale of the horror is greater. This need permeated coverage of the terrible events in Cumbria this week and operated in our minds as we read the details of what happened. It is even more complicated in such circumstances when the killer goes on to take his or her own life, because they are not then around either to be the focus of public anger or to explain why they have done what they have done.
The complex context in which media and indeed politics must respond to events like this was probed in a fascinating interview which Mary Wilson had on Thursday's RTÉ Radio 1 Drivetimeprogramme with Nigel Eastman, professor of Law and Ethics in Psychiatry at St George's Hospital in London.
Wilson asked Eastman whether it was the fact that what Derrick Bird did frightened us all so much that creates this need in us to be able to wrap it up in neat little package and say “now if we put certain pieces of legislation in place or certain events in place we can prevent another Cumbria”.
The professor agreed and said that while this was an understandable human urge, we need to realise that atrocities of the type which occurred in the Lake District on Wednesday are rare: on average they occur in Britain, for example, once every 15 or 20 years.
More importantly, Eastman argued, we also need to accept that there is no way we can prevent something like this reoccurring. One of the difficulties about these types of major events is that they tend to bring about natural social and political reactions that something needs to be done to prevent it happening again. Such urges to action are understandable but misplaced.
Eastman argued that our response to such events has to be akin to the way we would respond to a natural disaster. We should see it as something terrible but very occasional, and largely unavoidable. All our efforts should be concentrated on supporting those individuals who are affected by it. It is not helpful he emphasised to use the fallacy that something can or is being done to prevent reoccurrence as a means of seeking to help the current victims to feel better.
It is a sobering thought this weekend. Can we accept the inevitability of horror and the limitations of societal and political action and can we avoid the instant misplaced clamour for legislative or policy change?