Another Gray Day

Oh dear, a portentious title again! Inspired by watching “House of Sand and Fog” again on DVD, I began to think about what tragedy really meant. The Greeks seem to have thought of tragedy and the existence of gods as being closely related. In the film, the personal god of the only character to invoke one, Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) is impassive in the face of pleas to save his dying son. Do the gods enjoy tragedy and suffering? No doubt there is a science fiction story somewhere out there which suggests the Earth as a sort of cosmic Playstation, amusing cruel beings from some other star system. There are certainly plenty of games to choose, from moronic teenagers in Warrington kicking people to death, to Dien Bien Phu, the Armenian genocide and on, and on. All in memories, somehow accessible at quantum level…
The horrible thing about tragedy is that it is always a result of decision, somewhere along the line, avoidable or unavoidable, Everest expeditions, genocides, car bombs, happy slappings. And of course the opposite decisions, the non-events, are never seen as heroic, for we have the germs of that alien compulsion to tragedy within ourselves. The amazing thing about social acivities like education is not how much disruption there is but how much actually gets done, by kids who simply decide not to, by dictators who don’t dictate. It isn’t even a case of ‘just say no’ but a case of just ‘don’t’.