Civilisation
I would have liked to think that civilisation was more than a veneer. That cooperation and mutual help were part of how people behaved, fundamentally. Isn't it those qualities that allowed humans to become what we are today? And yet, it seems that as soon as we can get away with it, as soon as there is difficulty, we revert to aggression and self-interest. I'm watching the situation in New Orleans with mounting disbelief and horror. Residents there, trapped and lacking access to food and sanitation, are turning on one another. They loot, they beat, they rape. They shoot each other.
The response from the government is equally distressing. Instead of mobilising resources to get people out and aid in, they are making a token effort, and sending in a smallish force of soldiers authorised to shoot to kill. The president is calling it one of the greatest natural disasters they've ever faced, yet their response to it is, frankly, pathetic. I don't want to moralise, or to deny the fact that the people there are suffering, but it seems to me that the american culture of "me first" might have some responsibility here.
The "right to bear arms" is also to blame. In a situation like this, however much I would like to think that people would be helpful and responsible on their own merit, it's obvious that the fact that everyone seems to have guns is not helping matters at all.
The worldwide response to the tsunami partially bolstered my faith in the human race. The response to hurricane Katrina has taken it away again.
The response from the government is equally distressing. Instead of mobilising resources to get people out and aid in, they are making a token effort, and sending in a smallish force of soldiers authorised to shoot to kill. The president is calling it one of the greatest natural disasters they've ever faced, yet their response to it is, frankly, pathetic. I don't want to moralise, or to deny the fact that the people there are suffering, but it seems to me that the american culture of "me first" might have some responsibility here.
The "right to bear arms" is also to blame. In a situation like this, however much I would like to think that people would be helpful and responsible on their own merit, it's obvious that the fact that everyone seems to have guns is not helping matters at all.
The worldwide response to the tsunami partially bolstered my faith in the human race. The response to hurricane Katrina has taken it away again.
posted by Nick | 12:57 pm
1 Comments:
I really oppose some of the implications of this entry. Throughout history, and throughout the world, people behave abhorrently when put in abhorrent situations-- yes, even now, and even in America. Similarly, everywhere and everywhen, we can find acts of heroism, kindness, and altruism, large and small. To attempt to measure whether we have made any "progress" or not, we might do well to define what we mean by "progress" or "civilisation," and ask, according to whom? We might find certain abolished practices (in the name of "civilisation"), such as slavery or colonisation, to have merely taken a different form. For centuries, Western mankind has been fooling himself into thinking that he is more "civilised" than the "other" culture, and than the previous culture.
That said, I think a comparison between the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina is difficult for reasons that I will have to only headline here: number of people affected, perceived ability of the country to help itself, ability of media to watch at the abbhorent level, the way in which abbhorent circumstances unfolded themselves to their victims.
Furthermore, to hold up the reactions in New Orleans as the fruitition of American "me first" culture is emotional, biased and unfounded. What about the cooperative, PEACEFUL, mutual help of New Yorkers during 9/11? Or are they exempt from America's belief systems? Perhaps it is the outsider's expectation that America can behave as the epitome of "civilisation," that it should be able to solve all its troubles with a swipe of its mighty, logical hand. Wrong. The truth is, both Nietsche's "nasty, brutish" human nature, and Kant's logical self-control and "goodwill", are aspects in every single one of us, and always have been. And it is both of these that allow human beings to be what they are today...both cruel and kind, oppressive and oppressed, logical and thoughtless, selfish and altruistic.
Post a Comment
<< Home