This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/07/padstow-speedboat-tragedy-milligan-family
The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Padstow speedboat accident: making sense of an idyll turned tragic | Padstow speedboat accident: making sense of an idyll turned tragic |
| (2 days later) | |
| The peculiar chill of lives lost at sea is how calm everything looks afterwards. The scene that killed Nick Milligan and his eight-year-old daughter was described by onlookers with the raw immediacy of a running commentary; the boat's circular motion, trapping the family, sounded almost deliberated, as if it had turned shark in a freak mechanical rebellion. People watching helplessly described the screams, as if disbelieving their own disbelief; of course people would scream, but how could such a thing even happen? All eyes now are on the boat's kill cord, as though once we have satisfied ourselves as to the cause of this malfunction, the picture of a family under attack from their lethal speedboat will recede to a safe distance. | The peculiar chill of lives lost at sea is how calm everything looks afterwards. The scene that killed Nick Milligan and his eight-year-old daughter was described by onlookers with the raw immediacy of a running commentary; the boat's circular motion, trapping the family, sounded almost deliberated, as if it had turned shark in a freak mechanical rebellion. People watching helplessly described the screams, as if disbelieving their own disbelief; of course people would scream, but how could such a thing even happen? All eyes now are on the boat's kill cord, as though once we have satisfied ourselves as to the cause of this malfunction, the picture of a family under attack from their lethal speedboat will recede to a safe distance. |
| Horrible tragedies rip through you. In the split second before you have confected a hundred reasons why it could only have happened to someone else, you have an awful rush of poignancy. You consider the sight of your children battling against something you can't stop; you think of the terrible suddenness of a pleasure boat turned predator; you are flooded with sorrow for a family who, from now on, will greet impending summer, the casual noises of leisure, with dread. | Horrible tragedies rip through you. In the split second before you have confected a hundred reasons why it could only have happened to someone else, you have an awful rush of poignancy. You consider the sight of your children battling against something you can't stop; you think of the terrible suddenness of a pleasure boat turned predator; you are flooded with sorrow for a family who, from now on, will greet impending summer, the casual noises of leisure, with dread. |
| It's too much. The precariousness it underscores is worse, in a way, than human cruelty; it's so much harder to avoid. It disturbs any sense you have of being able to guard the safety of those who matter to you, which is all that keeps you upright. It feels disrespectful to that family to allow yourself the luxury of wallowing in pain at a vast remove, like a sort of virtual masochism. So you look away. But that carries its own penalty, that some detail might catch you by surprise. | It's too much. The precariousness it underscores is worse, in a way, than human cruelty; it's so much harder to avoid. It disturbs any sense you have of being able to guard the safety of those who matter to you, which is all that keeps you upright. It feels disrespectful to that family to allow yourself the luxury of wallowing in pain at a vast remove, like a sort of virtual masochism. So you look away. But that carries its own penalty, that some detail might catch you by surprise. |
| Nick and Emily Milligan's family would not care for, or about, the empathy of strangers, I imagine. That sort of thing helps for a much lesser grief, or one that is a lot further away. And, ultimately, what are you thinking when you scrutinise the family's faces on the front page of newspapers, trying to see the people you know live behind them? Is it a sort of prelapsarian yearning, trying by an effort of will to return to the carefree time when those carefree expressions were forged? Or are you thinking how glad you are not to be them? It is something of the two, pure empathy mixed with pure selfishness, a cocktail that leaves you nauseous and confused. | Nick and Emily Milligan's family would not care for, or about, the empathy of strangers, I imagine. That sort of thing helps for a much lesser grief, or one that is a lot further away. And, ultimately, what are you thinking when you scrutinise the family's faces on the front page of newspapers, trying to see the people you know live behind them? Is it a sort of prelapsarian yearning, trying by an effort of will to return to the carefree time when those carefree expressions were forged? Or are you thinking how glad you are not to be them? It is something of the two, pure empathy mixed with pure selfishness, a cocktail that leaves you nauseous and confused. |
| Philippa Perry, author of How To Stay Sane, says: "What we tend to do to protect ourselves is to have something that therapists call a stock response. If you were related to the family, you would have an original, felt response. You would feel something that possibly you had never felt before. But when we don't know them, what we tend to do, first, is to feel a bit of shock. Then we file that away and reach off the shelf for a stock response. If you had always been worried about speedboats in harbours, you would have a feeling of satisfaction that your prediction had come true – which gives you more confidence and more self-esteem. It's not particularly attractive, but it's a human trait that that's what we'll do. | Philippa Perry, author of How To Stay Sane, says: "What we tend to do to protect ourselves is to have something that therapists call a stock response. If you were related to the family, you would have an original, felt response. You would feel something that possibly you had never felt before. But when we don't know them, what we tend to do, first, is to feel a bit of shock. Then we file that away and reach off the shelf for a stock response. If you had always been worried about speedboats in harbours, you would have a feeling of satisfaction that your prediction had come true – which gives you more confidence and more self-esteem. It's not particularly attractive, but it's a human trait that that's what we'll do. |
| "I always think of Jane Austen, in one of her letters to Cassandra, she says, talking about the Peninsular war: 'How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!' That is a great quote for other people's tragedies." | "I always think of Jane Austen, in one of her letters to Cassandra, she says, talking about the Peninsular war: 'How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!' That is a great quote for other people's tragedies." |
| This is echoed in a news cycle – the shock of the event, followed by a collective casting about to see how it can be painted as the victim's fault. Or, if not their fault, then something that other people, more respectable people, would have avoided. Yet the crucial thing about the Milligans is not that they were a normal family; not that any one of us might find ourselves on a speedboat in Padstow. The point is that the situation would not have been avoidable; nobody looks at that tableau and sees the treacherous sea or mechanical failure; it's an idyll, your only protection against which is that you couldn't afford it. | This is echoed in a news cycle – the shock of the event, followed by a collective casting about to see how it can be painted as the victim's fault. Or, if not their fault, then something that other people, more respectable people, would have avoided. Yet the crucial thing about the Milligans is not that they were a normal family; not that any one of us might find ourselves on a speedboat in Padstow. The point is that the situation would not have been avoidable; nobody looks at that tableau and sees the treacherous sea or mechanical failure; it's an idyll, your only protection against which is that you couldn't afford it. |
| Perry points out, too, that "human beings are formed in story. Once it was all word-of-mouth, and from those stories we would inform our worldview or our philosophy. In the last couple of hundred years of newspapers, we've had a specific type of story, because you sell newspapers on emotional impact. And this, of course, will be forming us, so we will be thinking that people are less good than they actually are. We hear stories about bad people, not about good people." | Perry points out, too, that "human beings are formed in story. Once it was all word-of-mouth, and from those stories we would inform our worldview or our philosophy. In the last couple of hundred years of newspapers, we've had a specific type of story, because you sell newspapers on emotional impact. And this, of course, will be forming us, so we will be thinking that people are less good than they actually are. We hear stories about bad people, not about good people." |
| Here, the involvement of children in a tragedy is key; most of us become resilient to attempts to sentimentalise the hardship of adults. We transpose their plight on to our own, and – through an exaggerated estimation of our own qualities, normally, coupled with a well-founded suspicion that the news is trying to manipulate us – decide that it's not too bad. Try that manoeuvre with a child – transpose their hardship on to your own children – and it's almost unbearable, you have no resilience at all. No awareness that you are being sold emotional impact makes any difference. | Here, the involvement of children in a tragedy is key; most of us become resilient to attempts to sentimentalise the hardship of adults. We transpose their plight on to our own, and – through an exaggerated estimation of our own qualities, normally, coupled with a well-founded suspicion that the news is trying to manipulate us – decide that it's not too bad. Try that manoeuvre with a child – transpose their hardship on to your own children – and it's almost unbearable, you have no resilience at all. No awareness that you are being sold emotional impact makes any difference. |
| This leads into the swampy waters of whether or not parents are more sensitive, aware or humane than nonparents. This blew up recently when Niall Ferguson claimed that John Maynard Keynes, being gay and childless, came up with his harebrained theories because he didn't really care about the future. That is plainly nonsense – but there is a distinct flavour to disaster-zone empathy, something that does pass between parents more than it does between non-parents. But it isn't humanity at its purest; it's feverish and self-involved – what if that were my children? Whether it's helpful, or humane, is another story. | This leads into the swampy waters of whether or not parents are more sensitive, aware or humane than nonparents. This blew up recently when Niall Ferguson claimed that John Maynard Keynes, being gay and childless, came up with his harebrained theories because he didn't really care about the future. That is plainly nonsense – but there is a distinct flavour to disaster-zone empathy, something that does pass between parents more than it does between non-parents. But it isn't humanity at its purest; it's feverish and self-involved – what if that were my children? Whether it's helpful, or humane, is another story. |
| In this news cycle, where your worldview is formed of stories – which are maybe no worse than the stories we get from history, but are so much more numerous – how do you stay sane? Perry, who has written about this at length in her book, says: "You don't go to one extreme or the other. Don't repress your feelings, but don't be led by the nose by them. Use them, but don't be used by them. Don't be at their mercy." | In this news cycle, where your worldview is formed of stories – which are maybe no worse than the stories we get from history, but are so much more numerous – how do you stay sane? Perry, who has written about this at length in her book, says: "You don't go to one extreme or the other. Don't repress your feelings, but don't be led by the nose by them. Use them, but don't be used by them. Don't be at their mercy." |
| How does that relate to the Padstow tragedy? It's prurient to dwell on it, but cavalier to try to explain it away. Out of respect, we might try to burn this scene into our memories, just to be mindful of how fragile normality is. More likely, more news will overrun it, another tragic scene supplant it. | How does that relate to the Padstow tragedy? It's prurient to dwell on it, but cavalier to try to explain it away. Out of respect, we might try to burn this scene into our memories, just to be mindful of how fragile normality is. More likely, more news will overrun it, another tragic scene supplant it. |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. | |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. Enter your email address to subscribe. |