Lessons Amidst Tragedy In Oslo

In the aftermath of the calculated murder of 76 civilians in Oslo it seems everyone is talking about what we should learn from it all. For me, the lesson I have learned is that humanity still has the capacity to break my heart, that I could be shook from my numb apathy and that I could mourn for the dead I had never met.

While the analysts want to scan the perpetrators “manifesto” for answers, as if rationalisation lay within, while the far right groups look to distance themselves from the atrocity that underlines the sinister realities of where their thinking leads, while the Western politicians use it as a platform for tighter controls on a population that dreams of liberty even though it never remembers when it wakes… While all this takes place the families bury their loved ones and are left only with their grief.

It is easy to be angry. The senselessness of the crime, the vulnerability of the targets. The stories that come from the island shooting read like transcripts of those who had survived war, but they are mostly from children. Yet these people were not at war, had no hate in their hearts, innocent victims in a conflict that they had no comprehension of even as it took their lives.

So yes, it is easy to be angry and all too easy to hate. It’s a powerful emotion, something so primal it destroys sensibility the moment it is conceived and alters perceptions irreparably. The tools of hatred are many. Blame, lies, retaliation. We have seen it so many times down the years that the prevailing question in the face of such pain isn’t “how shall we heal” it is “who shall be next”, a need for catharsis that is believed to only come from the application of twisted justice.

We saw that with America, the reaction to the September 11th attacks leading to a loss of life that eclipsed even the suffering of those few mad moments. People with no connection to the events suddenly forced into the picture like spare pieces from a jigsaw with all too terrible consequences. In the need to try and grasp the big picture we forget the only one that is true; that there exists a human connection, one that would flourish were it not for those who want to make us forget.

Those people come in many forms. The hate groups, the poisonous politicians, the righteous that make out even the misguided can never be saved and even people like me, apathetic and inactive, who make up a silent, bored majority. Collectively we create a culture of divides that leads to the ghettoised planet on which we exist, one where the truly terrible can happen and we either shrug it off or echo the brutal sentiment.

Respect then the 150,000 Norwegians who went out into the streets despite their pain and showed solidarity not division, love and not fear and ultimately forgiveness in the face of a provocation so extreme it’d be easy to fall into old habits. Compare and contrast the marches of the EDL, a snarling, vicious mob that knows nothing of such pain despite their constant assertion that they are under attack.

Respect also the words of the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, his response a model for all Western statesmen in the future, when he said:

“We will not let fear break us. The warmth of response from the people in Norway makes me sure of one thing – evil can kill a single person but never defeat a whole people.”
He made his impassioned speech to a silent crowd, one that understood that their elected leader was too suffering in the same way they were, that it had hurt him as much of any of them. It was a rare, raw honesty that is often deemed to be a sign of weakness when it comes to assessing the virtues of our political masters. Here it was as appropriate as it was genuine.

He went on to say that to allow democratic principles and freedoms to be eroded would be the very victory the perpetrator had sought, calling instead for “more democracy and more openness” in their society. How many lives could have been saved had the rest of the Western world had a few more like him and a few less shameless profiteers?

And so, it seems, that there will be no backlash, no blame apportioned beyond the person responsible, no clamour for new targets in a bid to restore national moral. That mistake has been made many times over and finally it seems someone has learned its terrible lesson. Yes, lessons were there to be learned this time around, just not the usual ones that ultimately see history repeat itself.