Would Anything Horrify Us All Equally?

When I asked ChatGPT this question, its/his/her/their answer was, “While humanity has had moments that nearly everyone later recognized as horrifying, there has never been — and likely never will be — a single event that horrifies all equally.

Horror, like all emotions, is always filtered through the human lens.”

My friend Colleen and I might disagree on which of us is more terrified of spiders, but we’re both clearly on the terrified-of-spiders spectrum. And while we both experience terror when faced with an eight-legged predatory arachnid, we also recognize that some around us are more and less terrified than we are. But I’m not talking about degrees of horror.

I’m talking about an event or situation that triggers a single global gasp, an all-pervasive pause, a ubiquitous outrage felt equally by all of us. I’m talking about the kind of gasp, pause and outrage that forces us all into a congealed mass at the far end of the horror spectrum. A conspicuous consensus that causes us to reach for a single re-set button without which horror becomes a partisan commodity. “My horror is not your horror and your horror doesn’t matter to me.”

I’m horrified by your damnable atheism. You’re horrified by my deep attachment to a transcendent being and my unselfish desire to share heaven with you.

You’re outraged by my racism. I’m outraged by your ignorance of the scientific evidence I have to support it and by your use of scientific evidence to prove me wrong.

And so it goes. But wait.

What if a single event occurred that horrified all of us equally? An event that, in any civil society, might well be expected to unite us in mutual horror? A situation that had the potential to trigger that single global gasp, that all-pervasive pause, that ubiquitous outrage? You know, like the grisly assassination of young man in his prime. What would we do?

Would we join together in uniform outrage? Would we all reach for that single re-set button without arguing over whose turn it is? And what if some within our mutually horrified contingent announced that they were in fact equally horrified by things the victim said when he was alive? Would this upstart sub-faction expect the rest to share its binary horror? Would the rest of us be horrified by their attempt to dilute perfectly good universal outrage with a wimpy moral judgment?

Apparently even shared outrage breaks up under partisan scrutiny, and if that remains true, what will hold us all together? How long can we survive without a shared re-set button? How can we ever reach anything resembling a consensus or even a shared reality? How long before we will all finally be united — in mutual free-fall? And would that horrify us all equally?

Wise Ask: Are you as ashamed as I am?
Drop your answer… below.