Let's call the spade up front: I admit to being a slacktivist.
I am also a lot more, but that really doesn't enter into it.
If you want to write off everyone who is taking June 1 to spread awareness about one act of atrocity, among the thousands more that happened on the same day and will never be acknowledged by the media, then you can be hip and smug and move along.
But while we sip our coffee in the morning sunshine, nibble on a muffin, and cruise our email, facebook, and twitter accounts for interesting tidbits of "news", we vaguely remember that there's a very large world outside, much of it very inaccessible and unseen. And once in a while, a light is shined on a dark corner that shakes us, engages us to lend an individual voice that swells into a chorus of hundreds of thousands, calling for an end to at least this madness.
Houla is the My Lai of the Syrian conflict.
If you want to focus on why this particular massacre, it's because human nature is wired to react to the sensational, the visual, and the familiar. When LIFE ran the story of My Lai, the force of social networking, the ready availability of information at the click of a mouse, was still science fiction. But even then, the brutal deaths of so many women and children, photographed, circulated widely, was enough to rock the world of even the comfortable American who would rather not "think about all that ugliness."
Today, June 1, we focus on these children.
Go ahead, take a look.
It is a gallery of them full of life and smiles. You will see your own babies, your relatives, in their faces. They look so similar to pictures of children at a parade celebrating the 4th of July.
We need that recognition of similarity to touch that human vein.
See.
For those of you who feel moved to bear witness to their deaths, (warning: graphic) click here.
And then what?
The horror of so many dead children. The outcry that it must stop.
Critics will roll their eyes and cross their arms and say it changes nothing. That tomorrow, or at the very least, the next week, we'll be nibbling on our muffins and laughing at LOLcats, and pat ourselves on the back for "doing something" that amounted to nothing.
And maybe, in a lot of ways, they are right.
But maybe, in the few ways that really matter, every individual who stops and tells another person, who tells another person, creates enough of a ground swell to seek solutions that might stop another Houla in Syria. Public pressure can be a force for good, even if each person applying that pressure is small and far away.
Yes, I know. I can't be the only person who thinks of Life of Brian while I'm waxing philosophical about signing petitions, like this one, a Resolution to Protect the Children by bringing to bear the "full force of international law" against those attacking civilians.
Or this one, more defined, but still so terribly bureaucratic. The finger pointing between the Syrian government (read: just the current terrorists in power) and the other terrorists who want to seize power continues. And children die.
And we don't know how to stop it, other than lending a feeble voice, one that's not terribly sure it makes any difference, but one who knows silence isn't the answer, either.
Kyrie, eleison.
I am also a lot more, but that really doesn't enter into it.
If you want to write off everyone who is taking June 1 to spread awareness about one act of atrocity, among the thousands more that happened on the same day and will never be acknowledged by the media, then you can be hip and smug and move along.
But while we sip our coffee in the morning sunshine, nibble on a muffin, and cruise our email, facebook, and twitter accounts for interesting tidbits of "news", we vaguely remember that there's a very large world outside, much of it very inaccessible and unseen. And once in a while, a light is shined on a dark corner that shakes us, engages us to lend an individual voice that swells into a chorus of hundreds of thousands, calling for an end to at least this madness.
Houla is the My Lai of the Syrian conflict.
If you want to focus on why this particular massacre, it's because human nature is wired to react to the sensational, the visual, and the familiar. When LIFE ran the story of My Lai, the force of social networking, the ready availability of information at the click of a mouse, was still science fiction. But even then, the brutal deaths of so many women and children, photographed, circulated widely, was enough to rock the world of even the comfortable American who would rather not "think about all that ugliness."
Today, June 1, we focus on these children.
Go ahead, take a look.
It is a gallery of them full of life and smiles. You will see your own babies, your relatives, in their faces. They look so similar to pictures of children at a parade celebrating the 4th of July.
We need that recognition of similarity to touch that human vein.
See.
For those of you who feel moved to bear witness to their deaths, (warning: graphic) click here.
And then what?
The horror of so many dead children. The outcry that it must stop.
Critics will roll their eyes and cross their arms and say it changes nothing. That tomorrow, or at the very least, the next week, we'll be nibbling on our muffins and laughing at LOLcats, and pat ourselves on the back for "doing something" that amounted to nothing.
And maybe, in a lot of ways, they are right.
But maybe, in the few ways that really matter, every individual who stops and tells another person, who tells another person, creates enough of a ground swell to seek solutions that might stop another Houla in Syria. Public pressure can be a force for good, even if each person applying that pressure is small and far away.
Yes, I know. I can't be the only person who thinks of Life of Brian while I'm waxing philosophical about signing petitions, like this one, a Resolution to Protect the Children by bringing to bear the "full force of international law" against those attacking civilians.
Or this one, more defined, but still so terribly bureaucratic. The finger pointing between the Syrian government (read: just the current terrorists in power) and the other terrorists who want to seize power continues. And children die.
And we don't know how to stop it, other than lending a feeble voice, one that's not terribly sure it makes any difference, but one who knows silence isn't the answer, either.
Kyrie, eleison.
I'm so glad that despite your hesitations you went ahead and wrote the post anyway. I'll be tweeting it out with #tippingpoint.
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