Leave of Rationality.

It’s been some time since I’ve felt the ability to submit to my blog, but need to point out to anyone who may be interested that there is every chance I could upset individual sensitivities. That is not my intention, but is unavoidable as there is an issue…nay…phenomenon on which I must speak.
I will withhold names and direct references to places, although anybody with access to UK news organs will doubtless be aware of the case and the reaction to it which has spurred me to write.

Tuesday of this week, 16th December 08, saw the conviction of a number of people in a case of the murder of an 11 yr-old boy in a N.W. English city. The event took place in August of 2007.
The motive for the killing is still sketchy, with mistaken identity (of an 11 ye-old?) or one being caught in the cross-fire of some squalid gang turf-war being the likeliest explanations. Wrong-place, wrong-time is certain.
Tragic case. Pointless loss of life. All agreed.

Now living where I do, no longer in England, I am somewhat limited in my access to English language radio and choose not to avail myself of the press of my home country. I draw my news from the net and it serves me well. However, I had been deprived, until yesterday, of a poem written by the father of the murdered boy, which had been read out at his funeral (attended by 2,500), recited on the radio and printed in the press.
The poem would initially seem to be a valid tribute to the boy, and a cathartic exercise to help his relatives to deal with their private grief. However, by the third verse it becomes apparent that the poem is geared towards public consumption, with a suggestion that a god, from his heavenly position, personally selected the boy to be a striker in an all-star eleven of deceased footballers. You could read this as ‘arranged to have him shot in the back so he could make-up the numbers in some celestial soccer match‘….Mmmm???
Now I first read this poem after it had been submitted to an internet community, to which I belong, and being a secular humanist with atheism at my centre, I felt impelled to respond that I found the passage tasteless and for the normally rational reader to be expected to accept this as a valid explanation for such a pointless waste of life was an insult to humanity.
As expected, I was berated as heartless and insensitive, as though I was giving no quarter to the fact that the parents may be offended, should they ever chance to read my response. I responded with measure and held my position. I then stepped back and considered the seemingly national pastime of public outpouring of grief.

A few days shy of ten years prior to the murder of this boy, an event took place in a road tunnel in France which re-wrote the rules and raised the threshold of acceptability of public outpourings of grief, a threshold which has been steadily rising since.
The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, former wife of the heir to the throne of the UK, saw all manner of tributes paid to a person who had done a great deal of good in the world, but who wasn’t as squeaky clean as the industry that grew around her death would have you believe. The trouble came when you attempted to wade through the pavement deep garage forecourt floral tributes which were placed near her Kensington home by countless people who had never met her and who were more interested in simply being seen to lay tribute, to state that this level of public grief was perhaps a little overkill and of questionable taste. One would be pilloried as cruel and heartless and not allowing the bereaved children of this woman to grieve in private. Like…err…all those flowers and platitude sentiments publicly spoken by otherwise unconnected individuals who claimed they needed to find a way to deal with ’their’ loss?
One conspiracy theory followed another, with a Monday not being a Monday without a Daily Express front page ‘Diana Scandal’. But things found a level, the sons grew up to be as rounded individuals as royal sons can be, the odd hospital wing was named in her honour…life went on. The public, however, hadn’t had enough, and needed more shots in the arm of self-satisfying public grief.
Since that time in the late 1990’s, there have been numerous, very high-profile cases where (usually) children have needlessly lost their lives. This has seemingly given a ‘green light’ to anyone who cares so-to-do to take public grief at bereavement far beyond what would be commonly acceptable were it the death of an old man from a suburb of an average town. A complete leave of reason is taken, usually with a hint that the death was all part of a god’s design, (why does this explanation trump all others at such times?). Knee-jerk reactions with pressure campaigns for new laws, angry mob-mentality aimed at the not-yet convicted becomes a valid reaction, and any throwaway sentiment is deemed as worthy to aid people in overcoming their individual grief. Sadly, and all too often, the families and loved-ones of the dead are swept along on this tide, usually pushed into the current by individuals with a personal bleeding-heart agenda.
Swim against this tide and state that this is too much and it has entered the realms of the perverted and tasteless, and you are nothing short of accused of complicity with a wrongdoer in that particular case…Why?
What is so wrong and criminal about holding reason and saying “This is too much. This is, on no level, an acceptable way to continue. It cheapens life and it cheapens the loss of it.”?

Let’s not make a national pageant out of an individual's personal grief. Let’s leave it to find it’s own level.