"Mourning Sickness"

The following article was brought to my attention by A conservative blog for peace:

From: 'Mourning sickness is a religion'.

Britons are feeding their own egos by indulging in "recreational grief" for murdered children and dead celebrities they have never met, claims a report.

Think-tank Civitas said wearing charity ribbons, holding silences and joining protest marches all indicated the country was in emotional crisis.

The author said "mourning sickness" was a substitute for religion....
The report said Diana's death was the epitome of 'recreational grief.'

Patrick West, author of Conspicuous Compassion, on the causes of all this "manufactured emotion":

"Mourning sickness is a religion for the lonely crowd that no longer subscribes to orthodox churches. Its flowers and teddies are its rites, its collective minutes' silences its liturgy and mass.

"But these new bonds are phoney, ephemeral and cynical," he said.

"We saw this at its most ghoulish after the demise of Diana. In truth, mourners were not crying for her, but for themselves," he wrote.

What would Mr. West have to say about those red ribbons people wear for AIDS?

Moving on to the wearing of charity ribbons, the report said the act served to "celebrate the culture of victimhood" and was an egotistical gesture to announce "I care".

And demontsrations are, according to Mr. West

"too often an exercise in attention-seeking".

"Next time you profess that you "care" about something, consider your motives and the consequences of your words and actions. Sometimes, the only person you really care about is you."

Mr. West illustrates something I felt, but could not quite articulate at the time, twelve years ago when I attended a demonstration against Gulf War I. I had the feeling that there was something grossly wrong with that protest, not the anti-war cause necessarily, but the protestors themselves, with their proud, arrogant expressions of righteous indignation. It was my last anti-war demonstration.

I'm also reminded of a photo a person had taken of himself in front of the makeshift memorial at "Ground Zero" in Lower Manhattan several months after the terrorist acts, as if to say, "I was there and I care."

While the article singles out Britian, I think its conclusions are valid for much of the post-Christian Western World.