Precarious Life II.

Grief is such a powerful emotion. It is one that can literally consume you, leaving an empty void that is attached to a big pause and or silence. It seems that the world as you know it in a sense stops for a period of time. Those who do not consider themselves emotional, are even surprised by the effect grief has on them. I think it is the most powerful of the emotions. It can take your breath away. For some they never figure out how to fully recover or deal with these feelings, and are unable to totally return to what is normal for them. I feel that your mind set, if you were deeply attached to the person, never returns, completely to the way you were before. The level of the relationship you had with the person, definitely determines how grief affects you. When grieving, I think emotional pain can feel and affect you like physical pain. (pgs 22,23)

Political grief can show itself in the actual loss of another’s life, either physically or emotionally; a loss is a loss grieving is the natural process that follows. Losing an election can put one into a grieving state. You have lost something that had become your life for a significant period of time in your life. The Al Gore presidential election was a good example of this process. In a sense there was a form of political violence or violation with the way the election was handled. (I.e. possible foul play.) I’m sure he felt very venerable with a deep sense of hurt, pain and loss. 911 created grief for many people in this country. People mourned the lives of others as well as the incident itself. Politically is served as a reason for George Bush to go to war, thus using the people’s grief to spur them in to wanting to fight back; staring a war that the people may not have ever agreed to so easily. Emotional grief was part of the catalyst. Bush took this emotion and told the American people to put away the emotions (grief) and let’s fight back. (pg 29)

Causalities of war are mostly grieved for by their people. I feel that these deaths come under the heading of political grief; except we on this side, the Americans, don’t grieve them, this was referred to by the authors. (pg 34) There is no kind of attachment, and no type of relationships in these situations. If the press were allowed to photograph or video the devastation and killing, especially of small children, and the aftermath of their parent’s grief, there would then be an attachment and some form of grief on our part; which would probably prompt the majority of us to call for an end to the war. This may not be what the political process in action would want to happen. How often do you see these types of press reports in the news? Grief as I stated before is a very powerful emotion One minute everything is fine, in the next moment, the world can be changed drastically; for one, a few, or a whole nation of people, depending of the source of the grief.