by

Voyle A. Glover

My eyes wandered down the long list of names and as I read those names, I was conscious of an even larger list--the people whose lives would be forever altered and changed by the passing of those on TWA's Flight 800. I saw in my mind's eye the weeping, the mothers' deep anquish, fathers with pain, rage and frustration, friends with that deep hurt of loss and the knowledge that the friendship is over and only memories will remain. I saw a wide circle of others in each name. And I saw me in those circles, for their trajedy is mine now. Their deaths are the deaths of friends I never met, children I never had, mothers I never saw and fathers I wish I'd known.

The older I get the more aware I become of the "family" of mankind. Whatever else might seperate us in terms of culture, our varied views of God, philosphies and governmental systems, there is a common denominator: our humanity. Jesus Christ probably best expressed it with his words about loving one's neighbor as one loves him or herself. (The Jews of that day didn't care much for that since they had some very unJewish "neighbors," such as Samaritans, for example.)

A contrary philosophy is promoted in our world today. I am much more aware of the mindset of some religions whose basic tenets are that the "only good infidel is a dead infidel," and of the racist attitudes which simmer in the minds and hearts of millions. Because of these things and a world's insane rush for "prosperity" and the unending quest for power by some, we see a rapid increase of the passing of members of our families. Devastation visits us with random certainty and with a frequency that at times seems to be geometric. Some wilt under the staggering load it brings, too tired and too hurting to travel in their minds to the end of the road called "Consequences." They only know the road looks bleak, dark and untravelable.

It need not be so.

America is the biggest exporter of violence than any other nation on earth. Hollywood has shaped [uh, make that "bent"] the minds of millions with our number one "export." If advertising McDonalds and Coca Cola has created appetites for those products in the minds of millions of people globally, think what one and two hour movies (an advertisement running over an hour) are doing to the appetites of those millions. Tens of thousands of hours of movies are crammed into the minds of humanity every hour of every day, much, if not most of it violent, glorifying death and the weapons of death and the deeds of those who deal in death. And while I am not against self defense, not against the death penalty and not against standing firm, even agressively against tyranny and against criminal elements in our world, I am not for the glorification of violence. Our world sends a message out today that tough problems are solved by war, by violence. (What has the war in Ireland solved?) And Hollywood continues to pump movies into the mind stream of the world that seeks to render vicarious thrills to those who watch. Hollywood makes it possible to feed that perverse desire in humans to feed on gore, to emmerse the mind in horror and to be able to giggle our way back into reality in a few minutes. All harmless fun, they say. Mere entertainment.

There are those in our midst who think we are naive enough to buy into the notion that merely seeing a movie does not motivate people to emulate what they see and doesn't affect people psychologically. They think we're stupid enough to believe that advertisers are wasting billions of their dollars trying to do the same thing with 30 seconds of "soundbites." They think we don't know the billions of dollars they are getting paid to influence the minds of people like us.

We don't know what happened to Flight 800. Was it a terrorist attack? God knows. But the story of Flight 800 is, in a real sense, a movie. It's a story. It's a drama in which, like it or not, we've all become characters. Most of us will want to be "extras" on the horizon, walk-by glimpes in a movie that will be played before history and God. But in truth, I think we all need to have starring roles. I'm convinced that unless and until Americans rise up and take responsibility for some things and become assertive as to our tolerance of certain things, we will have a starring role one day. We will be the headline.

And others will weep for US.

The End

Copyright 1996 Voyle A. Glover

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