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COMMENTARY
January 26, 2011
People v. numbers
We can put a face on it now: "Anna Yablonskaya," a prominent and rising young playwright, lyrical poet, essayist and journalist from Ukraine, was among the dead (and maimed) at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. She was just in from Odessa, on her way to receive an award. Not yet 30 years old (with a husband and a small daughter), she was already known, at least slightly, in the English-speaking world; and one of her plays, Pagans, is being presented at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April.From what I can make out from a poster, it is an interesting play: about an old woman who tries to bring Christ into the life of a self-destructive granddaughter, over the heads of the fully paganized middle generation: the son and daughter-in-law from whom she is estranged. Anna herself (whose actual surname was Mashutina) is remembered by friends at the Royal Court as "a beautiful, joyful, passionate person, who was so wonderful to be around last summer." Passionate, yes, but also unsentimental, according to a Russian friend, found and quoted by ABC News; and thoroughly "modern" in the dramatic devices she used; "sensitive" and "attuned to the physical and metaphysical." She was strangely conscious of having "very little time," and wrote as much on a blog she kept, just a month ago. All these are hints of a real presence, perhaps even a prophetic voice. On one Ukrainian website I read an expression of frustration, that when there were people with something to say, like this Anna Yablonskaya, the media were instead focusing on some feminist demonstration in that country, in which a lot of young women went topless to make some asinine point; then breaking away to the sheer body count from the suicide bombing. This is the way of the world, and it only gets more so. At the moment I heard of the Domodedovo blast, I was distracted myself, in a semi-professional way, by the latest graphic makeover of a newspaper by the international design superstar, Mario Garcia. The Sunday front page of the Washington Post was very pretty; even prettier, I think, than the last makeover. As newspapers struggle to retain "eyeballs," they are being redesigned faster and faster, to present content that is shallower and shallower. They are "fiddling while Rome burns." I wouldn't have noticed were I not myself a graphic design junkie. I love this stuff, yet am aware of the huge and spreading black hole at the centre of our culture, and throughout mass media. Yes, important questions are still being discussed, but they are more and more peripheral to the black hole. Oddly enough, an exhibition of this was in the failed security arrangements at that Moscow airport. As even I have mentioned before, the victims of such blasts are sitting ducks. Security checks, even in Russia, are effectively randomized, to avoid "profiling" potential terrorists. This reduces the chance of catching one to long statistical odds, while reciprocally increasing bureaucracy and cost. It also creates huge pools of delayed travellers, who make the perfect soft target. The suicide bomber simply blows himself up on the near side of the security barrier. He doesn't even try to pass through. As President Medvedev was able to say, though perhaps only in the shadow of this catastrophe, Russia needs Israeli-style security arrangements, in which we forget about political correctness, and focus instead on stopping terrorists. But this requires looking into the faces of people, instead of treating them as statistical units. It involves asking such questions as: Who is this person? From where does he come? Why is he travelling? What is the message in his eyes and gestures? The Israelis openly "profile" because they have no choice. Speak to any Israeli security professional and he will tell you that the contents of the traveller's bag are the least interesting thing about him. Of course we need technology to scan for bombs, when possible; but first we need to spot the likeliest bomber. While this may sound like a mere question of technique, it goes deeper. The state itself must consider people as individuals, not as units of a mass. And it is only when this is done that we have any chance of defending ourselves against evils that are not "random irruptions of nature," but instead the morally significant acts of human souls. The victims of these blasts are not numbers. Media outlets all around the world kept echoing the number "31," then "35," as if this body count were important. Of course we need an approximation of scale, but the number is not the news. For obituaries can be written only one person at a time. From what I can make out, this murdered Ukrainian playwright was trying to tell the world what I want to tell it: that people are not numbers. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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