Compassionate one-upmanship

Three minutes' silence? Why three? Once upon a time, a minute was the standard gesture. At some point, two became considered appropriate. Today it's three. I'm all in favour of shared symbolic gestures, but this is a little weird. Not to mention setting a worrying precedent. Disasters are bound to happen, man-made or natural, and at this rate we'll end up with a sliding scale from 1 to 10 - how many minutes any given tragedy earns will be a complicated matter calling for weeks, nay months, of diplomacy and leaving a nasty, sour taste long after as the Daily Mail slugs it out with the Guardian over whether the six minutes settled on was too long, too short or just enough time to display the necessary sympathy for those affected by, say, the San Andreas fault coming over all funny and tossing a chunk of California into the sea, but narrowly missing San Francisco's richer suburbs.

Never mind. It's still a nice thought.

I remember in 1993, SA had a minute's silence (or two; don't pressure me on the details) in honour of Peace and Reconciliation. I can't remember whether it was in specific remembrance of any particular bloodbath, or just a general 'let's put the bad stuff behind us' idea; probably it was after Chris Hani's funeral. At any rate I do remember I was on the way to the shops at the time, crossing the bridge over the highway, and suddenly noticed large numbers of cars were pulling over. So I stopped too. (I was on foot. No accidents were caused.) From the bridge I had a pretty good view of pedestrians and drivers (of all skin colours) stopping all around; traffic didn't come to a complete halt, but it was still pretty eerie. And strangely powerful. It's just a gesture. But it meant something.