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"The Horror! The Horror!"
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
HORROR MANIFESTS ITSELF IN PROFLIGATE FORMS: NATURAL, HISTORICAL, PERSONAL horrors, as well as, Leszek Kolakowski (1988) argues, metaphysical horror. So frequently in human life do various horrors occur, afflicting each of us individually as well as those we care about, that even the plight of those we never knew nor will ever know but whose lives have been so horrifically damaged now seems our own as well. Amid the myriad forms horror takes in human lives, whether natural (tsunami, droughts, earthquakes) or historical (the Shoah, 9/11, the Middle Passage, the Trail of Tears, the Gulag), often the final horror is some combination of natural and historical horror (the Great Hunger in Ireland-a famine whose horror was increased by an indifferent English government toward an oppressed colony; the killing fields of Pol Pot, whose planned program of starvation, work until death, and torture unto death was allowed by the deliberate indifference of the self-serving policies of both China and the United States).
Any listing of the horrors of human history quickly seems to move into infinity. Was it ever different-in any culture? Will it ever end, short of some unbelievable utopian peaceful compassionate world? More and more, any notion of Utopia steps forward faithful to its original name: no place. The best response to natural, historical, and individual horrors is at least to refuse to be apathetic and, above all, to fight injustice in every plausible way we can: for example, in today's news alone, to resist the revolting injustice of refusing entry to children - children! - fleeing violent, intractably unjust regimes in Central America and to deliver whatever medical aid is available to West Africa without delay.
Walter Benjamin wrote the truth about our situation:
A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel...