why do you do it?
A tale of Two Rationalizations
Bomb makers. Is it just me, or does everyone have at
least half a dozen bomb makers they've spent quality time with?
Ah, you've noticed I'm Middle Eastern. And this is an alternative website.
Your hands are reaching for the phone, itching to dial homeland security.
Relax. My friends aren't low-life, bearded, thick-accented, nitroglycerine-mixing,
CIA-trained-and-now-disowned terrorists. Not at all. They're lower middle-class,
relatively
clean-shaven,
mildly-accented, State Department certified, Utah and New Mexico detonating,
high-tech missile tinkering bomb-making rocket scientist geeks.
Now don't you feel better?
In my experience, these bomb-making folk are deceptively mild-mannered,
with random streaks of machismo. Cat lovers and cat-lover-ridiculers.
You wouldn't guess what they do by looking at them.
The nature of their work is a mystery to me and of course, it's not like they're at
liberty to discuss the particulars. Nevertheless, I ask questions to gain understanding
of their daily toil and within certain parameters, they answer. They explain things to
me in simple terms: We make rocket ball bearings. We figure out what material to use on
the outside of the rocket so that when it hits the ground, it doesn't explode on the surface,
but goes deep, deep under and then blows up at the bunker of whichever nefarious dictator dares
to insult America at the time. Mostly, we have these mathematical formulas and physical
principles we work on. At conferences, we end up shouting to eachother "My equation is bigger
than your equation."
And they tell anecdotes such as this. "Once, when I was driving across the desert to the
test site, I picked up a Native American on the road, and we had a delightful, wisdom-inducing
conversation. That guy was just out in the middle of nowhere, walking, walking, had been walking
for miles. He had a different perspective on everything, it was wild. Anyhoo, I dropped him off
and kept going to the test site, where in five minutes, I watched them waste 1.5 million dollars
before my very eyes. No, not the test itself, THEY DID THE TEST WRONG! They didn't do what we told
them, and now we'll have to re-test it. These people are such idiots."
This anecdote makes me feel comfortable enough to ask a few more question. "So, wasting taxpayer's
money, heh heh." And then I start asking these folks why they do what they do, if they have any
conflict with it, if they find their work satisfying. They get defensive. Hey, it's a job, intellectually
challenging.
I push a bit more. "You. You're a first generation immigrant here. What if this technology was used
in your home country?" Well (and you can see why the State Department has cleared them) if it's used
against those nefarious tyrants now in power, that's no problem. "OK, so what if the use is indiscriminate? What if it kills innocent civilians,
which this type of warfare primarily does? Do you feel any sort of responsibility?"
At this point, a bomb-maker's patience can fray, and they say, "Look, you pay taxes, you vote, you're letting me buy you dinner...don't act like
you're not part of this system." (Yes, that buying me dinner thing stung.)
But my judgemental thoughts continue to churn. How
could a person be so directly involved in the making of bombs?
Aren't there other ways to make a living, equally intellectually
challenging? Why get
out of bed every day to further the knowledge and production
of weapons of mass destruction? Then again, given that the world
appears to be a nonstop,
bloody power struggle, one may as well cast one's lot with the
biggest powers. The perpetuation of overkill can be logical.
I, righteously enough, couldn't possibly pursue such work. To make actual deadly
weapons that could actually be used on people, reducing life, and millions
of civilians to insignificance...not my department. To spend so much energy
making bombs is to ultimately trivialize life. I'm way too righteous for
that. Yes indeedy.
That's right, says the bomb maker. A righteous person like you ends up there
in Hollywood, writing screenplays about war and conflict and plague and serial
killers and rapists and cowards.
You're becoming part of an industry that routinely trivializes
life, enacting scenes of mass destruction, apocalypse as entertainment, glamorizing
and
exaggerating sad and true stories of abuse and hatred and evil
unpunished.
I rationalize and say that CLEARLY this entertainment stuff is FICTION.
And my bomb-making
friends say CLEARLY our bombs are for DETERENCE and lots of those movies are
"based on a true story". Yes! Confess! Hollywood makes second hand or pre-emptive
smut films. Smut films once removed. We know something like that
actually happened to some poor, tortured dead fool. But they're
dead now! So what
the heck: for your bloodthirsty entertainment here's fifty variations
of what it might have looked like, sounded like, been choreographed
like. Sit back, enjoy, don't crunch your popcorn
too loud, we might mistake it for bones, when we should be hearing
the liver squish. It's got to be realistic, now. Kids can't be
getting confused between
the sound of liver and of bone.
Do you feel any sort of responsibility? No, you're just cruising down that highway
of trivialization and melodrama, soothed by the "comedy is tragedy plus time" mantra. Know any good Auschwitz jokes? Oops, probably need a bit more time for
that genre. Then again, that was a subtext for Hogan's Heroes. "I see nothink." Packaging, packaging. Free speech.
Obviously there was no use talking any sense to these people. So I went home, and there I was visited in
my sleep by the dream of the white horse. |
