Wow! They're people, just like you and me!
I finished my Peace and Conflict Resolution final this morning, handing it in about 10 minutes before 12:30. I also got my final journal assignment back, the one about “transformation.” There was an indecipherable note on the back, a couple of words I couldn’t make out, written by Professor Said. I have no idea what he thought about it, but I was very proud of that journal assignment.
I wish I felt more transformed by that class. I think it was just a perfect recipe for disappointment to expect that. That’s not to say that the class was bad: had it not been for that class, I probably would not have followed the crisis in Ukraine and the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo as closely as I am now, and I wouldn’t have heard of all of these names like Thomas Merton. The problem is that everything that I don’t like about SIS was embodied in that class: the air of self-importance that surrounded everyone in the class, the lack of personal contact or attention. That was the big sticking point for me: you can’t stand up there preaching all these high-minded concepts and expecting this wonderful little utopia to be created when you have a class with 72 students.
I guess I do feel sort of bitter, just about waving my hand in the air so many times and never being called on. I do acknowledge that. But at the same time, I’m just tired of the entire SIS vibe. I’m sick of everyone sitting through four years of classes and thinking that they’re such wonderful people because they have intellectual discussions about the roots of September 11th, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or development policies in Africa. Bullshit, that’s what it all is.
Seriously. I was talking about this with my roommate tonight. September 11th was a tragedy, a horrible even, no doubt about it. But it’s just so interesting to me how a few years earlier, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo came to an end. This was a war in which 3 million people died. 3,000,000. The fact that 3000 people died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is awful, but how do people get away with calling that an attack on civilization, an attack on humanity, an attack on freedom, while the deaths of 3 million people don’t even knock O.J. Simpson and Monica Lewinsky out of their consciousness? What about the Rwandan genocide? 800,000 people being hacked to death in a matter of weeks is less of a threat to humanity than what happened on September 11th? Maybe it is. After all, people in Central Africa don’t prance around with shopping bags full of clothes and put all of their creativity and energy into developing new ways of communicating with people without actually having to see or hear them like “we” do. Remember, civilization and freedom only exist in an air-conditioned SUV ride through a strip mall parking lot.
And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Everybody at AU, and indeed everyone in the country, and everyone all over the world is obsessed with this conflict. All the Americans are obsessed with this conflict and grieve over it. Why shouldn’t they be upset? It is terrible what’s going on there. But why is that so much worse than civil wars in Sri Lanka, or Kashmir, or Sierra Leone? Why is nationalist/religious strife so horrible there and not when it happens in Nigeria or India? Obviously there is a large Jewish population in the United States (the largest in the world, even more here than in Israel) and we have our fair share of Palestinian immigrants too, so our demographics would be able to relate more to that conflict than one in Sri Lanka. But that doesn’t mean it’s any more or less important. It’s ok to not be completely educated on every single horrible thing that happens in the world. The problem is when you start assuming that the most important or dramatic events are the ones that fall within the scope of your own tunnel vision.
I’m tired of it all. I’m tired of debating the War in Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with people, I’m tired of feeling incredible empathy for the thousands of people who are going to die in Darfur after the Sudanese government carries out their next planned slaughter, I’m tired of studying the important issues of development and peace and envisioning a better world. I want everybody to stop traveling to third world countries and snapping pictures of little children and then coming back and talking about what an incredible and life-changing experience it was. You know what? Don’t come back. Stay there. Seriously. Don’t tell me what an amazing experience you had, don’t tell me how you developed this empathy and awareness of the problems of the world, don’t tell me about how the orphans in South Africa or wherever are human beings with hopes and dreams just like you and me. I don’t care how wonderful and smart you’ve become just because you pranced around the third world for a week with your camera and your bleeding heart. Next time, don’t come back. Stay there and actually live with these people every day. Talk to them, ask them about their lives, dreams, and belief. Talk to them about some guy down the street who acts like an asshole, complain about the food, tell them dumb stories about your friends back home, and listen to them do the same. Realize that these people are the same selfish, impatient, funny, scatter-brained, lazy, flaky, goofy, thoughtful, contradictory creatures that mill around the concrete consumer wastelands here, except they mill around against a different backdrop. And then, when you here about their villages being burned, when you here about their little children being sliced up by daisy-cutters, when you see the people that you know and love being cut down by a disease that is literally wiping out the population of Africa, you’ll feel true pain, true empathy, true transformation, and maybe you’ll do more than tell people about your amazing trip and apply for another NGO internship.
I wish I felt more transformed by that class. I think it was just a perfect recipe for disappointment to expect that. That’s not to say that the class was bad: had it not been for that class, I probably would not have followed the crisis in Ukraine and the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo as closely as I am now, and I wouldn’t have heard of all of these names like Thomas Merton. The problem is that everything that I don’t like about SIS was embodied in that class: the air of self-importance that surrounded everyone in the class, the lack of personal contact or attention. That was the big sticking point for me: you can’t stand up there preaching all these high-minded concepts and expecting this wonderful little utopia to be created when you have a class with 72 students.
I guess I do feel sort of bitter, just about waving my hand in the air so many times and never being called on. I do acknowledge that. But at the same time, I’m just tired of the entire SIS vibe. I’m sick of everyone sitting through four years of classes and thinking that they’re such wonderful people because they have intellectual discussions about the roots of September 11th, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or development policies in Africa. Bullshit, that’s what it all is.
Seriously. I was talking about this with my roommate tonight. September 11th was a tragedy, a horrible even, no doubt about it. But it’s just so interesting to me how a few years earlier, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo came to an end. This was a war in which 3 million people died. 3,000,000. The fact that 3000 people died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is awful, but how do people get away with calling that an attack on civilization, an attack on humanity, an attack on freedom, while the deaths of 3 million people don’t even knock O.J. Simpson and Monica Lewinsky out of their consciousness? What about the Rwandan genocide? 800,000 people being hacked to death in a matter of weeks is less of a threat to humanity than what happened on September 11th? Maybe it is. After all, people in Central Africa don’t prance around with shopping bags full of clothes and put all of their creativity and energy into developing new ways of communicating with people without actually having to see or hear them like “we” do. Remember, civilization and freedom only exist in an air-conditioned SUV ride through a strip mall parking lot.
And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Everybody at AU, and indeed everyone in the country, and everyone all over the world is obsessed with this conflict. All the Americans are obsessed with this conflict and grieve over it. Why shouldn’t they be upset? It is terrible what’s going on there. But why is that so much worse than civil wars in Sri Lanka, or Kashmir, or Sierra Leone? Why is nationalist/religious strife so horrible there and not when it happens in Nigeria or India? Obviously there is a large Jewish population in the United States (the largest in the world, even more here than in Israel) and we have our fair share of Palestinian immigrants too, so our demographics would be able to relate more to that conflict than one in Sri Lanka. But that doesn’t mean it’s any more or less important. It’s ok to not be completely educated on every single horrible thing that happens in the world. The problem is when you start assuming that the most important or dramatic events are the ones that fall within the scope of your own tunnel vision.
I’m tired of it all. I’m tired of debating the War in Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with people, I’m tired of feeling incredible empathy for the thousands of people who are going to die in Darfur after the Sudanese government carries out their next planned slaughter, I’m tired of studying the important issues of development and peace and envisioning a better world. I want everybody to stop traveling to third world countries and snapping pictures of little children and then coming back and talking about what an incredible and life-changing experience it was. You know what? Don’t come back. Stay there. Seriously. Don’t tell me what an amazing experience you had, don’t tell me how you developed this empathy and awareness of the problems of the world, don’t tell me about how the orphans in South Africa or wherever are human beings with hopes and dreams just like you and me. I don’t care how wonderful and smart you’ve become just because you pranced around the third world for a week with your camera and your bleeding heart. Next time, don’t come back. Stay there and actually live with these people every day. Talk to them, ask them about their lives, dreams, and belief. Talk to them about some guy down the street who acts like an asshole, complain about the food, tell them dumb stories about your friends back home, and listen to them do the same. Realize that these people are the same selfish, impatient, funny, scatter-brained, lazy, flaky, goofy, thoughtful, contradictory creatures that mill around the concrete consumer wastelands here, except they mill around against a different backdrop. And then, when you here about their villages being burned, when you here about their little children being sliced up by daisy-cutters, when you see the people that you know and love being cut down by a disease that is literally wiping out the population of Africa, you’ll feel true pain, true empathy, true transformation, and maybe you’ll do more than tell people about your amazing trip and apply for another NGO internship.
posted by Justin @ 6:16 AM
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