Luckily, it has not all been bad/creepy: one of the few productive things that has come out of all this is that in an attempt to become interested in his interests, I have been doing a lot of reading on various humanitarian crises, mainly in Sudan and Myanmar (good starting points:
Not On Our Watch and
Nicholas Kristof's columns). If you have not devoted entire days to reading about genocidal regimes, and innocent people having their eyes gouged out, and children getting limbs blown off, and gang rapes, and tens of thousands of people starving to death while the international community mostly twiddles their thumbs, some words of advice: have a puppy around or listen to some Disney music, because it's a quick jump from "I'm sad" to "I no longer have the will or desire to live in a world like this."
The more I learn about this stuff, the more incomprehensible everything becomes and the more confused I get (I find this is true of most things). In order to deal, I've formulated a working thesis, and I'm interested to hear how others feel about it: There are some things worth dying for, but there is absolutely nothing that is worth killing for.
When I came across especially
heinous atrocities, two questions overwhelm me. First, how can anyone commit these crimes? And second, what kind of people are we (you, me, every single person who is aware in any way of these crimes) such that we are not doing everything we can to stop it? The only answers I have come up with to these two problems are completely inadequate, yet I still feel the need to share them because I have wracked my brains and I really can't come up with anything else.
My response to the first question: I don't think the people doing these horrible things actually understand what they are doing. Clearly they've thought about it to the extent of, "take gun, shoot person" or whatever, and maybe they even think they've got a reason to do it, but I don't think they actually understand the consequences of what they do. I am sure they don't feel the consequences of what they do, because it is unfathomable that a sentient being can come across that kind of suffering and allow it to happen, much less cause it to happen.
When I read about the regimes in Sudan and Myanmar cutting off humanitarian aid to millions of people so that they will slowly die of hunger and thirst and related diseases, I try to imagine what it's like to be a refugee. I fail to do this, because I have no capacity to understand that sort of suffering. The best I can do (and my best is very lame) is to remember some pretty extreme diets I've been on. I know what it's like to be hungry all the time for a long time, and I know how intensely miserable that is, but I know that I got through it because I knew there was food to be eaten at some point in the future and because I did it to myself. How must it feel to know that the awful empty feeling would continue and worsen until the moment you die? To know that starving to death is the best possible thing that could happen to everyone around you?
The regimes and people causing such situations must have never thought about this, and because they haven't, they can allow people to die this way.
As for the people who go around shooting, torturing, raping, disfiguring people, I don't think they think beyond the moment their act is over. I don't think they ever consider how it must be to live with the consequences of their actions--whether it be for the members of the community who witnessed the event, or for the person who has to live with the memory of violation. They know they have a thing to do so they do it, and then they move on to the next horrific thing. Perhaps they do these things because the act itself gives them pleasure, but I refuse to accept the idea that it is the pleasure of their victim's suffering that makes them do it. I don't think this is true because such a realization is so repulsive that it would be debilitating. No one can realize such a thing about themselves and still go on living. They don't really understand the things they're doing or they wouldn't do them.
The very obvious flaw in this reasoning is that if bad people do bad things because they don't realize these things are bad, then just show them how much it sucks to be on the receiving end and people will stop doing bad things. Sometimes, I imagine the UN taking Bashir around Darfur and Chad and showing him the terrible things he's done, and when he realizes how awful he is, he would be overwhelmed with remorse and repent and devote the rest of his life to undoing in some small measure the disaster he created. I imagine diplomats showing videos of mutilated women, of disfigured children, of men with their eyes gouged out being led around by their wives and children, to the leaders in China and the Chinese leaders would break down in tears and stop giving weapons to these horrible regimes. Then I get even more confused because if this is how it should happen, why hasn't it happened, why doesn't it happen?
I have no answer for that.
Which leads me to my second question and my pathetic response: there isn't much that I or the people I know can do about these situations. I don't have much money to give, and even if I could make a sizable contribution to aid-relief organizations, they're being kicked out of the disaster-zones so the money wouldn't make a huge difference anyway. I've taken personality tests for volunteer organizations and failed miserably because I don't have the strength to not become a useless, sobbing, hysterical mess when faced with such intense suffering, so no one will take me as a volunteer. I sign petitions and write messages to people with more power than I do, but I sincerely doubt the utility of those things. I'm probably just making excuses for my inaction, but the money I "have" isn't mine to give away, and the time that I have no one will take. But the thing that really gets me is the people in power--Obama, Clinton, the UN, the EU, Bush, Cheney, Rice--all talk about how awful everything is but let it continue! What have they (other than France) actually done about it? If the whole world agrees that the mess in Darfur and Myanmar and the Congo and all those places is terrible, can the whole fucking world not put a stop to it? Who the hell is Bashir anyway that he can successfully fend off the free world for six years and go on killing people and ruining lives? When your job actually entails international relations and politics and "spreading democracy/peace", what can be more important than putting an end to mass killings?
I don't understand this, probably because my world-view is too simplistic.
This post has degenerated into a rant, but I will shirk responsibility and blame it on the time (4 am) and my strong feelings on these issues. As a result of years of training, I've got to make some sort of effort to tie in my thesis. So I'll end with this: I don't know where life comes from--meiosis/cell division, Mother Nature, God, general cosmic forces, whatever--but I sure know that no human being has ever handed life to another. No person has ever given life, and no person has the right take it away. It doesn't matter how righteous your cause is, it doesn't matter if you are defending the Union or fighting off Nazis. Unless you've got the explicit approval of general biological processes/Nature/God/the Cosmos, if you take what is not yours, you are a thief and a criminal. Even the most monstrous person is still a person, he still has a family, he still has feelings and thoughts. No one short of Jesus Christ is, has been, or will be in a position to judge whether another has a right to live.
