Threnody
The other day the family went to a charity walk. We braved largely indifferent, slightly cool weather to enter an event purporting to help sick children. Like many other charity events, the event itself is a honeypot for altruistic leanings, and is not itself endemic to the aid effort. That is, we rescued no babies from infirmary during our three-mile walk; we walked as a symbolic act. Ours was not the only, nor the most abstracted, such act.
On the way to our bus stop, we came across a Broadway (Cincinnati) from H. R. Giger’s visions: the pavement had been transformed into a chrome-and-steel spine snaking toward the center of downtown. We walked, gawking at the hundreds of what you wouldn’t call “motorcycles,” but rather “bikes,” as in “All I need is my bike, a bitch, and a beer—hold the bitch,” or some other biker euphemism.
In addition to the March of Babies, which, disappointingly, included few actual marching babies, Cincinnati was hosting a large-scale service for Matt Maupin. You can google the details, if you haven’t heard them already, but the short story is that Mr. Maupin was presumed captured serving with the U.S. military in Iraq, and after years of MIA status, was finally found to have died.
The local media (at least) had been preparing for the service, held in the Great American Ballpark with thousands in attendance, for weeks. The three local major affiliates (at least) simulcast. And, along Broadway, hundreds of bikers prepared to show their respect for a fallen soldier.
I found myself conflicted, truth be told. Without straying into a full discussion of the unit value of human life, I can say that the show of respect for this one man probably eclipsed all the local coverage of every other local death for the last year or two. This level of social activity seems like an exercise in shared obsequiousness, as if the participants aren’t so much joining out of an unadulterated need to connect with this soldier’s experience, but rather to make an appeal to the social conscience, to say, “See, I’m caring, I’m patriotic, I’m flying the flag at half-staff, and these colors don’t run,” while looking around eager to be seen in such a pious, thoughtful state.
At the same time, though, I can’t help but be awestruck at the level of organization and dedication required to make such a show. There’s something there beyond the pedantry, these people care about something, and they’ve committed to exercising their compassion. Echoing an idea I only briefly mentioned here recently, this is case where separating motive impulse from execution sheds a different light: all the bikers, all the stadium-goers, all the military and ex-military personnel, family, friends, and fans, all of them (like all of us) have an earnestness on which they act; even if their action is itself under-considered and reactionary, that shouldn’t detract from the quality of their earnestness.
This will maintain as a central theme my confusion about humans. Yes, we have the capacity for logic; but logic is a measure of the path from one state to the next, and does not sit in judgment of the state itself. Consider the following statement:
If I lift a full-size M1-A tank over my head, all dogs are brown.
This statement is always true, except in the universe(s) where I can actually heave several tons of steel; because the precedent is always false, the consequent (the color of all dogs) is unevaluated. So, despite the fact that the propositions by themselves are false, their logical combination can be true.
Using this, we’re not far from seeing how easily people use logic to arrive at preposterous ends. I can’t fathom how honoring a fallen soldier, insofar as this is honoring a fallen person, would seem preposterous. But people die daily in Cincinnati without so much as an 11-o’clock footnote. However impressed I was, I can’t shake feeling that 10,000 hearts fluttered too much for one and not enough for many.
No Comments Yet