MemeMachineGo!

At Electrolite, PNH links to this CNN POW profile of Sgt. Mark Riley which says:

Riley […] taught himself the guitar and is a science fiction buff who is making a chain mail shirt for himself.

PNH adds “God. He’s one of our tribe.”

I don’t have a tv. I’ve been reading a lot of online news and weblogs about the war, and so I’ve seen still images of the wounded, the dead, the captured. But not any of the video, of the POWs, or anyone or anything else.

So I knew there are people dying, killing, suffering. And I was outraged at all the stupidity that led to the situation. But ultimately I remained detached.

Until knowing that some poor bastard fellow sf geek is out there, in the hands of people whose country we’re invading. That the best-case scenario features his spending every day worrying about being tortured or killed. Worse-case scenarios feature one of those worries being realized.

And it suddenly felt personal.

Probably Sgt. Riley and I have read some of the same books, but that might be it. Our reading tastes could be wildly different, as could our values. I have no idea whether I’d like him personally, or he’s someone I’d choose to spend time with, or vice versa. There are lots of people I meet at cons with whom that’s not true.

But none of that matters. He’s one of the tribe, and he’s in terrible danger.

Part of me was tempted to feel guilty that I’m feeling this so much more personally for having found commonality with one POW, when I ‘should’ have been feeling that all along for all the suffering of fellow human beings. But that’s unrealistic and counter-productive. We’re tribal. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a human thing. It has a shadow-side that should and must be fought against when found in ourselves or our society, in which anyone who is Other than the Tribe is dehumanized (leading to rhetoric like “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”)

Times like this, I sort of wish I prayed, ‘cause, well, what the hell else are we going to do?

I hope you make it back home safe, Sgt. Riley. You and everyone else.