Meeting Monsters

Again and again the news turns to Austria, the newest testimony to the depths of cruelty that people are capable of. Newscasters mention shock and surprise at the fact that the captor hasn’t mentioned why he did it, or how he was able to go on vacation while four people were trapped in his little warren. What answers do they think they can get? What can he possibly say that makes it all coherent?

Just before this segment on CNN, there was a few minutes on Somalia where a woman described a man being dragged away, his limbs cut off, and then killed by a roving gang. Why is there no question about this behaviour? Perhaps because we understand it all too well already. Perhaps that’s the difference: there isn’t a randomness to his actions. They lasted decades and were methodical, exacting, careful, and so hidden and internal.

The trouble with monsters, as we are finding out, is that they don’t look like Medusa or a Centaur as in the statues: they look like everyone else, act like everyone else, vacation like everyone else. You don’t know and we will never know.

But that is the job of art, not the news. To help us to see, to perhaps understand. Don’t expect explanations.

Don’t expect to know.