Even Russian President Vladimir Putin called the war he unleashed against Ukraine a “tragedy”. The label minimises human responsibility, including his own, says a Harvard Kennedy School research associate.
File photo of a resident looking at the location where rescuers recovered the body of his son from debris in Kharkiv, Ukraine Oct 6, 2023. continues to cause unspeakable, unimaginable suffering. By now, the word “tragedy” is firmly installed in the lexicon of the war and has become almost a cliche.
When Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered in 2015, Putin referred to the “shame and tragedies” of political killings in Russia. In dictators’ utterances, the invocation of tragedy is not incidental. Designating something a tragedy is meaningfully different than calling it an atrocity or a crime, for which the wrongdoer must be held responsible and punished. Calling it a tragedy serves to minimise the human responsibility, typically their own, from the causes of the “tragedy”.
Those connotations come from the origins of the word “tragedy” and its meaning. Tragedy originated in ancient Greece as an art form that most poignantly reveals the mystery of interplay between fate and free will. A classical tragic hero is a man, usually of noble birth, who is fated to doom and destruction by the gods. During his rebellion against that unjust fate, a tragic hero nevertheless commits errors.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Commentary: Should Singapore restaurants be more transparent about their pricing?A dispute over whether a group of tourists were overcharged for a live crab in Singapore has opened a debate about whether restaurants are transparent enough about their pricing, says sociologist Tere
Read more »
Commentary: Zoom calls may be making us more dissatisfied with how we lookCosmetic surgeons and psychiatrists are seeing more clients dissatisfied about the way they look on videoconference calls and social media, says this university of Colorado psychiatry professor.
Read more »
Commentary: There is a bigger threat to US trade than Chinese chipsWashington’s obsession with protecting the semiconductor sector is not misguided, but it risks leaving out the aerospace industry, says Bloomberg Opinion's Tim Culpan.
Read more »
Commentary: Siam Paragon shooting - spotlight on gun control shouldn’t leave mental health in the shadowsThere are plans for stricter gun laws after a Bangkok shopping mall shooting, but preventing future tragedies requires the Thai government to tackle other pressing issues too, says Boonwara Sumano of the Thailand Development Research Institute.
Read more »
Commentary: Long COVID patients are much more likely to have multiple organ abnormalitiesThere is compelling evidence that long COVID is real and can affect major organs in people who were previously hospitalised with the disease, says Oxford University\u0027s Betty Raman.
Read more »
Commentary: The moral case for no longer engaging with Elon Musk’s XX is now an app that puts abhorrent content into users’ feeds, then financially rewards the people most successful in producing it, says Dave Lee for Bloomberg Opinion.
Read more »