Perspective
from the samoans:
33 have died in the VT massacre.
233 souls died in Iraq in yesterday's bombings alone.
468 people are estimated to have died in Darfur yesterday from malnutrition and violence.
I don't think I'll wear those Hokie colors tomorrow afterall.
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4 comments:
Seriously?
That might be the most inane post I've ever read from you.
Seriously?
Why is there a difference in the loss of human life between Africa, Asia, and America? Since more people died in Iraq on Monday than in Virginia, those lives don't matter? I understand the media has been overplaying the story. Yes I recognize that the situations in Darfur, Southwest Asia, and I would include the "family planning" in Southeast Asia are tragic. We need to be actively seeking solutions for those situations. But that in no way takes away from what happened in Virginia on Monday.
Wear orange and maroon today. Make a donation to Doctors without Borders or Medical Teams International. Email your congressman with your concerns about Iraq. Volunteer for the campaigns of John Edwards or Mike Huckabee or ....
Don't ever minimize the loss of even one of God's creation.
I think the point is that most of America has minimized the value of non-american human lives. We aren't trying to say that the tragedy in Va isn't absolutly horrible, because it is. It's sad and it's scary and it's just another example of the brokeness of this world. But it also angers me greatly that America is outraged and horrified and jumps into action at this tragedy, yet does nothing for the hundreds who died in Iraq or Sudan today or the thousands who die of preventable diseases each day in Africa.
It's an example of our own self-centeredness that we fail to even notice, let alone become upset over the atrocities outside of our borders.
From an Economic standpoint the lives in Iraq don't matter. They're replaceable. I love the quote from Hotel Rwanda where Nick Noltey says "you're less than dirt; you're African." It's true, dirt often times has some economic value while people in Africa are economic liabilities to their country and ours, just look at the aid we've sent to African countries in 2004, $4.3 billion. That's alot of (our) money. Oh, by the way, America is the hieght of our Civilization, we don't expect people to be bad. In Africa and the Near East people don't participate in our civilization, they're not as good, morally, ethically, economically, or rationally as we are.
The VT students were, as the world stats suggest, the top 1%. They were college material. They would be productive and valuable to our society.
Bottom line:
We're ethnocentric and it's hard not to be. It's the same reason we fought a war in Bosnia for genocide (Europe) and not Rwanda.
I would agree that we americans (and other developed countries)
don't respond to situations in Africa the same way we respond to things at home. To some extent that is the ethnocentric nature of all mankind - a tendency to see others in the context of ourselves. To feel and respond to Darfur, Afghanistan, China, etc. there must be something that makes us recognize our connection to the peopls and events there. Even Jesus became a man - to share in our struggles, to understand the pain of sin. I don't know if he had to do that to feel connected to us - but he did do it. . The value of human life, the desperation of mankind's physical and spiritual condition is only diminished by ANY action that denies the grief / horror of evil acts. Rather than choose not to share in the grief over VT - participate in it and use the feelings it generates in ourselves and those around us to take action on behalf of others wherever they are in the world who live daily with the same kind of evil. I don't understand why not sharing in the public support / mourning for VT in anyway benefits the unmourned.
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