Last year, when couple of Hongkong tourists were kept hostage and a few were killed by a Philipine guy, the entire country of Chinese was fueled up with anger towards the "south sea barbarians", as well as the always dissatisfying China commie government. The situation of now Mumbai is different: the perpetrators are more ideological, consequences are more serious so that the degree of how much of what I say may apply to you is varying. But in that similar case of Chinese hostage, while others bemoan and anger, I see more irrealistics: 1, the sense of community, the feeling as if ourselves have been put into torment is unreal; 2, new risks, non-traditional disasters, including the most manifested one-terrorism attack, are not any more harmful than traditional disasters except it robs you of your stereotypical cognition.
That 1st thing I said is rather annoying to most people that I risk the shame of being traitor to my folks. What I have to say is: why it makes people tend to others like real brothers when they actually, in everyday real life, quarrel and fight with each other over triviality; bargain and curse each over things came between them; push and step on others in crowded metro; backstab the colleagues sit right next to you in office?
2. Terrorist attack brings very little, if not negligible, amount of casualty than regular road accident, endemics, homicide, domestic violence, infanticide, suicide, all of which came from no alien source of terror but our own sectors of society. Terrorism is terrible only because of our inability to locate and identify, our general incapacity to bring it before our cognitive judgment and judge it according to our own ways of recognizing things; for us it is everywhere but it's in fact nowhere. It is the big Other, the primordial darkness that threatens the young kid with cognitive dysfunction rather than much physical harm. Our fear is unreal.
The anger and fear goes away in next few weeks, things are getting back, everything remains no change.
All that above, is true before you have your own concerned people involved in this tragedy. If you have, I'm sorry for what had happened, please act up and do something real. That's whole lot different: sense of community is not fake.
