Sense in the Senseless

Whilst I realise that due to the live news time in which we exist, these thoughts are now well and truly outdated, they have continued to rattle around in my head for the last couple of weeks. They are outdated because they again relate to the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombing, which has, at least in my Australian context faded into white noise news.

In the immediacy of that horrific event, I was intrigued to see the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, speak of the attack as "senseless". I by no means want to downplay the atrocity, hurt, pain, shock and terror that these bombings inflicted, BUT, to use the term "senseless" to describe this event seems to me to be somewhat non-sense.
One of Postman's outcries against of the state of our education system in his book The End of Education (1995) was that "the ways in which language creates a worldview are not usually part of the schooling of our young" (p.177). He goes on to say "that humans live in two worlds - the world of events and things, and the world of words about events and things" (p.181). The point being that how we speak about events and things not only reflects how we see the world to be, but encourages us to see the world in particular ways.

This is what made me get stuck on the suggestion by PM Gillard that the bombings were "senseless". The question I couldn't shake was in what world do these actions not make sense (therefore qualifying to be sense-less)?

It seems to me that the world that this word (senseless) wishes to create in the light of this event is one where we, the victims, the democratic and free Western world, have come to a place were we would no longer use violence, particularly that inflicts injury and death on innocent civilians, to make a point - whatever that point may be. By labeling this event as "senseless", it is to say, the world in which I now exist can no longer make heads or tails of why this just might have occurred - and may yet, occur again.

But I just can't swallow that pill. Have we forgotten that the US (as well as Australia) is still involved in "The War on Terror". Does it not make sense that the front line for those who want to fight back is not their countries, home soil or citizens, but, by the very nature of the enemy being terrorists, it is the countries, home soil and citizens of those who have given this war such a title. Are we so naive to think that the acts of violence carried out in the "lands of the terrorist" have not also inflicted injury and death on innocent civilians?

Don't hear me wrong, I am not trying to make a comment on the war itself or the "justifiability" of the actions of either side. Rather, I am commenting on how the soundbite world, and the words that make it up, can shape us. If these actions are truly senseless, then are not those who carried them out by definition thoughtless (a prerequisite activity for using sense)? And if they are thoughtless, are they not then by definition fools (those not acting wisely)? But if this is the case, then does it not make us appear even more foolish that such fools were so capable of perpetrating such foolishness against those of us so wise to see the foolishness of their folly?

Or perhaps, calling this act "senseless" is non-sense.

I don't agree with or support in any way these acts because I am able to make sense of them. It in no way diminishes the atrocity of the events or the pain and hurt inflicted on the direct victims because there may be a sensible explanation for why acts of terror continue to occur across our globe. To make sense of these events actually fills me with hope. A hope that one day those sensible explanations will become non-sense because of a world shaped by new words.