Response Guide.

After events like Friday night in Paris there are always a few different kinds of response around. These points apply in general whenever there is a similar tragedy, but I'll use Paris as an example to discuss them.

The first, which can generally be ignored, is the idiot response, where idiots use horrific events to back up their stupid, bigoted viewpoints.

They'll say things like 'Proves Islam is a violent religion'. There are well over a billion followers of Islam in the world. If they were all homicidal the world would be a hell of a lot more violent than it is.
They'll justify persecuting and attacking Muslims. However, these attacks are not just against Westerners, but everyone that disagrees with the terrorists' world view, including the vast majority of Muslims. That's why they also attack Muslims and countries in the Middle East and Africa.
All religions have been used to justify violence and murder. There's even a militant wing of Buddhism, for goodness sake! How does that work?
Oh, and the Donald Trumps of this world who are using this to argue against gun control, who think that any member of the public with a gun would have stopped this, just fuck off. If good guys with guns solved everything, America wouldn't lose more lives every year to gun crime than Europe has in decades to terrorism. If guns made the world safer, America would be the safest, most peaceful place on earth.
They blame migrants, ignoring the fact that these are the people that the migrants are trying to get away from. In their war torn homelands they face this terror every day, that's why they risk everything to cross into and through Europe.


Then there are those who think that other events are more worthy of the Western world's grief.

They'll say, 'Sure, it's sad, but where were your tears for Nigeria/Turkey/Tunisia/Kenya/Lebanon?'
The further away, the better, but this is not the time for one-upmanship. There is no need to be a 'sympathy hipster', trying to prove that you cared about a tragedy before everyone else, that you prefer the old massacres in smaller countries.
France is closer, geographically, culturally and politically, to us. Many of us have walked through the streets of Paris. This makes the events more relatable to most people in the West than the events in Beirut. We are human, we are flawed.
Of course, it's not helped by the 24 hours news channels repeating the same few details over and over for hours, not daring to look away and report on anything else for even a minute, lest they miss out on being the first to reveal some new tiny morsel of information. If they spent less time focussing on one story and instead gave more attention to more stories, the quality of both the reporting and the public's knowledge would be much better.
So yes, by all means bring attention to events that have been overlooked, but there is no reason that people can't care about more than one group of people at once.


It seems every bad thing in the world now results in a #PrayFor...

If praying ever did any good, there would be no need for the hash tags in the first place. The majority of problems in the world involve people's imaginary friends. The sooner they grow out of them, the better. Gods can't save us, only our own humanity can.


There will be calls for changes in security policy, but we cannot defend freedom by losing freedom. So don't close the borders, don't give up your right to privacy. Go out next Friday night and meet friends, make new ones, live, laugh and love.