One
It's not simple, not easily resolved and I don't care what Bono thinks about this or any other issue. I do not have answers. All I know is that here is a question that anyone with a heart needs to be thinking about. And call me a bleeding-heart librul, but I truly believe the people of Darfur are my kin. One hundred, even fifty years ago, we could turn our backs on suffering, because we didn't know it went on -- or could pretend it didn't -- and we knew that there would be no means of ending it.
Now we know. We can't pretend. We can't pretend it is right that some of us are obscenely rich while children die in the dust. We can't pretend that the system that has created both rich and poor is the best we can do. I refuse to believe that that is the best we can do for our kin.
posted by Dr Zen @ 4:16 pm
14 Comments:
I used to care, but on a continent where they don't even care about their own people and never have why should we fret about it. You are talking about a continent that kills women that have been raped for being "Adulters" life imprisonment for homosexuals is the law, a health minister gets sacked for trying to improve the lives of AIDs suffers, where governments refuse to criticise Mugabe, where debt is cancelled and the money is used to buy weapons it goes on and on fuck em. Yeah i cried a lot about it back in the 80s but they need to sort themselves out, by don't want interference unless its in the form of cash and then most ends up in corrupt government officials swiss bank accounts.
Zen: I refuse to believe that that is the best we can do for our kin.
yo, Zen, you won't even lift a finger to swap logins in order to help a fellow westerner who is also practically starving AND is working his ass off (with all of his heart) trying to make a small difference AND is also offering you an great opportunity to make more money doing what you love, to boot.
so it's hard to take your concern for starving third-world strangers too seriously.
i'm just saying.
put your money where your caring mouth is.
no, wait, put your keyboard where your caring mouth is and you might even get paid for doing so.
like, whoa.
my point?
invest in peace.
don't talk about art, create it!
the only way that peace has a chance is if peace has an incentive.
invest in peace, love, understanding, and creativity!
(NOT war, hate, stupidity, and destruction).
i rest my case.
until next post, that is.
Zero, you cannot possibly be comparing your own situation to the situation of those in the video! I did NOT just read that.
I'm just tired and hallucinating, right?
A
i was making a point about human nature.
Zen: I refuse to believe that that is the best we can do for our kin.
Anonymous: It is disrespectful and ignorant to bundle vastly different cultures and diverse people into "a continent" that does this or that or something else you picked up in headlines concerning just a handful of countries. This is the colonialist and racist mindset that persists in so many a westerner: They have the same skin color, and therefore are the same.
Blurbees: I have no words for you, except that I hope you didn't actually watch the video all the way through for the sake of regarding you as a human. Next time, before you try to make a point about human nature, try to think for 10 seconds. I does wonders to a person.
theminotaur said...
Anonymous: It is disrespectful and ignorant to bundle vastly different cultures and diverse people into "a continent" that does this or that or something else you picked up in headlines concerning just a handful of countries. This is the colonialist and racist mindset that persists in so many a westerner: They have the same skin color, and therefore are the same.
You will find that the same factors dominating politics in Africa, Tribalism(not of western doing)Nepertism, Financial greed. (No amount of Western help can over come such things apart from colonisation.) The African council do not want western interference as they so it as a throw back to Colonial days. They do however want Cash Aid and history has shown that only a small proportion of that aid reaches the people that need it.
WTF is nepertism? Perhaps you meant nepotism? Not that it helps your post make any more sense.
One thing about your post is for sure, though:
When you think about nepotism and financial greed, you think about Africa and all those damn niggers asking for handouts. I mean, we just end up funding terrorism by giving them money.
---
The fact of the matter is, as a society, the US has never had any intention of actually doing any good by our humanitarian aid. Any real change would take a fundamental shift in how we are conducting ourselves on the international stage. It seems, however, that we're a bit too interested in domination for that.
It's like I ran you over in my car , gave you a fiver to get yourself "fixed-up", and called you a greedy little bastard when you complained that it wasn't enough.
theminotaur: Blurbees: I have no words for you, except that I hope you didn't actually watch the video all the way through for the sake of regarding you as a human.
i watched it all the way thru, and i've seen many other very similar videos for years and years.
Next time, before you try to make a point about human nature, try to think for 10 seconds.
i've given quite a bit of thought on the broader subject (as well as all of the minutia specifics of the human condition as it manifests everywhere) for more than thirty years.
I does wonders to a person.
my comment was mostly addressed to Zen and i'm quite confident that he fully understood the point i was making.
if not, i'd be more than happy to clarify it for him.
anyway, the bickerfest.com project (that Zen is currently not lifting a finger for) has great potentional to help solve many of the stupid pointless problems of the human condition -- all of which mostly arises out of the idiotic expenditure of negative energy and wasted greed -- which is born out of the foolish misundertandings amongst people and their lack of better things to do than be nasty to eachother.
not to mention plain old foolish fear.
those human condition dynamics will likely never go away completley, unfortunately, but they can be greatly improved with only minor effort.
hence my comment.
...
those [negative] human condition dynamics will likely never go away completely, unfortunately, but they can be greatly improved with only minor effort.
and a bit of faith.
...
minor effort? You are more idealistic than I thought. Yes, there are some things minor in nature that can improve our lives with one another on this lovely planet, but most problems need a real life-changing kind of effort, which is rarely minor in nature.
The majority of us have a heart problem, Z. What minor efforts are going to change that?
I do know what you're saying. I do. If each of us made the effort to do just one small thing more than we currently do, that would be considered improvement. But great improvement? That's where I'm at odds with your optimism.
I'm also not optimistic that your attempts to batter Zen with guilt will bring about his change of mind regarding bickerfest, either. ;-)
arleen:
The majority of us have a heart problem, Z. What minor efforts are going to change that?
a minor change in heart.
arleen: I'm also not optimistic that your attempts to batter Zen with guilt will bring about his change of mind regarding bickerfest, either. ;-)
i'm not battering Zen with guilt, i'm trying to pound him over the head with logic and common sense (and a bit of creative vision).
besides, Zen is not the kind of person one needs to walk on eggshells with. he neither expects it, nor does it.
IMO, anyway.
arleen: But great improvement? That's where I'm at odds with your optimism.
great improvemnents often come from the smallest of realizations.
sure, that happens far more often in industry and science than it does in people as a whole, but the same dynamic applies to both.
our negativity about the world and others is only a state of mind.
a friend of mine summed it up quite nicely the other day when he shared the first line in his book with me:
"the universe is kind."
it's something that we as "mature adults" have convinced ourselves is totally false.
for good reason, obviously, that being our accumulated experiences, but still... it's our own little brainwash for the most part.
anyway, all i need to get Zen to write in the bickerfest is a silly check for $100 -- which he should be getting in a couple weeks (as soon as i choose which investor to allow to invest in the project).
i'd just love to see him take the initiative before it comes to that.
i'm a hopeless romantic, i guess.
Post a Comment
<< Home