So, it
appears that 3 million people sat down to watch Derren Brown’s ‘Live’ Russian
Roulette Stunt on Sunday 5th October. The irresponsibility and insensitivity of
Channel 4, who broadcast the event, needs to be highlighted, in the light of
the recent tragic incidents related to gun crime and the sanity of Derren Brown
needs to be questioned. Despite Mr Brown
(unbeknownst to the viewing public) using blanks instead of live ammunition,
the fact remains that 3 million people tuned into watch someone attempt to
shoot himself in the head. Forget the
excuse of psychological tricks or mind games, because this highlights an
increasingly worryingly trend in the fascination that we have for death. We are all guilty in some way, for don’t we
slow down on the M25 to have a peek at the victim of the latest accident?
So where
does this deep morbid and perverted fascination for tragedies that afflict
others come from? Is it due to the
media? Have we become desensitised to
violence, killing and death, as a result of what we see on our TV screens and
in the cinemas? Or have society and the
time we live in just become more violent?
Recent images from the Iraq
war were shown before the watershed time and seemed to shock less than in
1991. They say that art imitates life,
which must mean that society has become more violent and death more apparent,
where a life of human being is not worth 2 pence. Have we become that arrogant?
Next to the
fascination with death is the fascination with cheating death. The Blaine’s,
Browns and even Houdini’s of this world all revel in the ultimate parlour
trick, feeding our constant desire as a viewing public, to cheat death. Why are we so concerned about cheating death?
The faiths teach that death is inescapable.
In Islam, we are told in the Qur’an that ‘Nor can a soul die except by
God’s leave, the term being fixed by Writing’ (3:145). What does this mean? We can not cheat death. Death is the only one certain thing about
life. So why do we fall for these cheap illusions that these individuals create
about cheating death? Is it because they
create an image that they can achieve what man can not or is it something
deeper?
So how do
we move away from this fascination of death and of cheating death? We have to live
our life to prepare for our death.
Regardless of whether one believes in an afterlife or not, the
fundamental question that we ask ourselves, is how we can live to make the
world a better place, so that when we die (which we all do), our children will
benefit from what we did. This is the
real idea of sustainability, a word that governments like to toss in to appease
the environmentalists. We need to
rethink about what drives us in life.
What do we do? Why do we do
it? How do we do it? Our lives need to incorporate peace, justice
and equality. Our children will need to
live and grow up in a safe world, where people live in peace and justice and
are not persecuted for their race, colour or religion. This is a responsibility that we as human
beings have towards each other and also the rest of creation. We need to lose our arrogance and cohabit
with other people and other living things.
We as people living in the so called ‘developed’ world need to take the
initiative and tackle the key issues that affect our society. We can’t expect the government to do this on
their own and even if we did, they have not given us the confidence that they
will go about it like this. The
government is only content in healing the surface wounds afflicting society,
whilst completely ignoring the root causes.
The recent moves to deal with the increase in gun crime are evidence of
this. Rather than look at the causes of
gun crime, the government announced new measures for the police. This will not solve the issue as the
government is not looking into the root causes such as unemployment; poor
education and so on. By not dealing with
the root causes, the government will systematically fail to cure the maladies
of society
