...families - who saw the way the people chose to die as suicide - many people have a powerful belief that suicide is a sin...
This aspect had not even occurred to me. Those who jumped had a choice of two horrible deaths. To overlay some sort of religious template on this, accusing them of the 'sin' of suicide, is to display much of the same mentality as the suicide bomber who 'glorifies' an equally diseased and vile interpretation of their highly personal version of God through murder.
Roger, suicide is seen as a sin by many Catholics the world over (I'm not a Catholic, by the way).
I think to compare the complex feelings of grief that families must have felt - and grief usually in any case includes anger towards the one who has died, however 'unfairly' - to the motivations of the suicide bombers is hardly appropriate.
I didn't really want to get into a discussion of this subject anyway, as I said in my initial post on the other thread which is quoted by Bjorke at the beginning of this one.
As my words were used I thought I would make a contribution, which I have - but I'll leave it at that, now.
jstraw, I agree that everyone was affected in their own way that day, and that we all empathize with the families of those lost. It's not the legitimacy of feelings that has a hierarchy. It is the life-altering experiences of that day that have a hierarchy. To imply everyone experienced even remotely the same thing is like saying people IN a car accident experience the same thing as those who WITNESS a car accident. I would equate my own experience to that of a pedestrian that dove out of the way of a fatal accident and then tried to assist the injured and recover the dead.
To imply you and I experienced that day in even a remotely similar way is simply BS. You didn't watch people brace themselves in a window with your own eyes, hear the thump when the bodies hit, run for your life when 2 WTC came down, experience complete darkness for 20 minutes until the cloud cleared while you were choking on dust and feeling the rumble as the other tower collapsed, not knowing if it was coming your way, see the huge see of abandoned shoes left by people who kicked them off and ran for their lives, spend the afternoon clawing at debris with your hands or a bucket, guided only by the chirping sound of the firemen's personal emergency beacons, finding only small parts of bodies. Similarly, I did not experience the loss of a family member, and cannot begin to imagine the trauma of those who did. I certainly attended enough funerals of friends and acquaintances.
I am far from the top of it, but let's face facts, there IS a hierarchy of what people took away from that day. I have the chest X-rays and respiratory function test scores to quantify some of what I took away. I was lucky. Others only ended up with a death certificate.
In the same way I can imagine what the folks in the planes and the towers felt, you can imagine what I experienced. But you can't KNOW what I experienced because you did not experience it. You don't wake up hearing the rumble of a falling building in a dream. You don't cough from respiratory ilnesses. You don't occasionally catch a whiff of the Trade Center fire when someone is torch-cutting steel and accidently ignites a piece of plastic. You didn't lose your North Star for getting home from the bar (keep the WTC on my right and I'd hit the PATH train). You probably don't look at every airliner flying over your city thinking it's just a little TOO fricking close, and why dont they change the airport approach patterns.
I'm not sure why you find it problematic to recognize those differences.
I respectfully apologize. You are right. There is a hierarchy of experience.
I'm not sure though, that I understand the purpose of 'you don't know...you weren't there...' statements.
It's important to remember that there are things one cannot know if they're too intimately associated with an event. This is why fathers of murdered children don't sit on their killers' juries. It's also why it surely must be painful and frustration for those that watched the bodies fall, discuss the politics of that day.
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Roger, suicide is seen as a sin by many Catholics the world over (I'm not a Catholic, by the way).
I think to compare the complex feelings of grief that families must have felt - and grief usually in any case includes anger towards the one who has died, however 'unfairly' - to the motivations of the suicide bombers is hardly appropriate.
I didn't really want to get into a discussion of this subject anyway, as I said in my initial post on the other thread which is quoted by Bjorke at the beginning of this one.
As my words were used I thought I would make a contribution, which I have - but I'll leave it at that, now.
Dear Cate,
I'm sorry to have drawn you into an area you did not want to have to visit, but I'd stand by the observation that what we have here is a straightforward conflict between reality -- whether the horrible reality of two alternative vile deaths, or the simple reality that all sentient beings desire happiness and the causes of happiness -- and the religious beliefs that suicide is a sin or that jihad is holy.
I am a Catholic, but I find it hard to really categorize jumping as suicide in the strictest sense of the word in this case. Faced with certain death from flames or falling the outcome is the same. As the writer alluded, perhaps it was one last act of defiance or the chance to choose ones final fate.
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I am a Catholic, but I find it hard to really categorize jumping as suicide in the strictest sense of the word in this case. Faced with certain death from flames or falling the outcome is the same. As the writer alluded, perhaps it was one last act of defiance or the chance to choose ones final fate.
Exactly the same argument as adduced by my wife, whose mother was Catholic and who considered the same religion. Which is more suicidal: staying in a burning, collapsing building, or jumping?
I don't think a sane Catholic would have much difficulty in dismissing the very idea of this being suicide.
Coping with death for living is a strugle that has been around for centuries , Scott ( "theflyingcamera") brought up an incident from 2007 years ago that still keeps people talking today.
Living are looking for reasons of why death happens and what causes it , reasoning like : he/she smoked, he/she was overweght, he/she did not take care of themselfs or even better it was an accident ... All of htose things are something living have to tell themselves in oder to continue with the everyday monotony...
Religion is a blancket that supposed to make you sleep at night.
I see people everyday that spend a lot of their life infront of computers or whatching/discussing TV's programing while life around is sliping by , they escape realaty
There is no other spicies on this planet that is aware of their own outcome(Death) other then humans , we live with it everyday , every moment of our life reminds us that we are closer ...
Photograph stops the moment , but once taken seem surrial , because the momment is gone for ever , it's past not present
PHOTOGRAPHER
becomes a tool that reacts visualy to the surroundings.
Beeng AWARE is something one lives with and copes with , people that are not PHOTOGRAPHERS find it unfathemed that someone could possibly think of triping a shutter where infact the shutteris triping without a moment of hesitation , there is not even a slight second thought ... PHOTOGRAPHER IS TRAINED TO REACT FIRST AND THEN THINK NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND...
If one thought long and hard about anything ...nothing ever would get done...
People viewing/discussing photographs are the once to understand not the one that took it ...
BUT,
I lost family to Nazi's in World War Two , but people like Steven Spielberg keep's on reminding me of that with "Schindler's list" and I am very greatful that he does ... I watched it only after three years it
A peorson so far removed from realaty as to call " Faling Man" a "Piece of
shit" is someone that thinks that haven exist's and they will never have to make a choice of how they die , it will be made for them ...
Releogion is dead and it died long time ago wake up people we have short time here , so get off the chair you sitting on and go photograph , LIVE IT
I am a Catholic, but I find it hard to really categorize jumping as suicide in the strictest sense of the word in this case. Faced with certain death from flames or falling the outcome is the same. As the writer alluded, perhaps it was one last act of defiance or the chance to choose ones final fate.
Many people would surely feel the same, Catholic or not, but some (who at one point were identified as immediate relatives) obviously did not feel that way (this is something I have read about before, not only in the article posted). In the article, wasn't the 'act of defiance' the writer's interpretation, not the families' - or some of the families'?.
If I can clarify, my intention was not to make any sort of categorical statement (and certainly such views would not reflect my own feelings) but to suggest a point of view that was obviously very real.
I think my point is - this is a very complex picture, and issue. Our supposed need for it, and to interpret it in a particular light, and the various interpretations it has received, is not the same as the actuality of what was taking place at that moment.
"I think my point is - this is a very complex picture, and issue. Our supposed need for it, and to interpret it in a particular light, and the various interpretations it has received, is different from the actuality of what was taking place at that moment." Cate
Cate, thanks for this clarification. It seems to be a good rendering of the whole thread. The act itself is difficult, at best, to comprehend. The overtones of subjective interpretation are what we humans tend to do in most situations with facts. The bias of political, religious, sociological, relative or absolute thought are but legs on the snake. tim
I think my point is - this is a very complex picture, and issue. Our supposed need for it, and to interpret it in a particular light, and the various interpretations it has received, is not the same as the actuality of what was taking place at that moment.
Dear Cate,
No question: you must be right. But unless we discuss it, analyze it, pick it to pieces, pick our reaction to pieces, pick the world to pieces, we might as well just forget about it.
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