Note: (Musing follows)
Author Notes about this Blog
Is Haiti a Forerunner of the Future?
Little in these musing are particularly original. After a lifetime of living, reading, and pondering, the musings really are more an assembled puzzle from the many pieces acquired from all this living, reading, and pondering. Haiti is important because of it's unique history, it's implications for the rest of the world, and because it a depressing example of going down a road of no return.
Haiti, early on, was the richest colony of France and referred to as the 'Pearl of the Caribbean'. Like the United States, it had forested mountains, pristine rivers, extremely fertile soil---a land of natural riches and beauty. Columbus landed there on Dec 5, 1492 and wrote:
"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.
Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals…."
When the original Indians were enslaved and then exterminated, mostly by disease and murder, slaves from Africa were imported in huge number until even more huge plantations abounded all over Haiti. Plunder, greed, and slavery is a suitable short history of early Haiti under European domination. The plunder, greed, and slavery generated a huge population of slaves, a number which far exceeded any non slaves. The average lifespan of an imported slave was like 6 years, so the turnover rate was great.
Eventually the slaves revolted and left Haiti with a population of mostly uneducated, illiterate citizens with few skills, little family, and a cauldron of varied cultures and religions.
"How", it might be asked, "could a country once as beautiful, bountiful, and serene as Haiti, ever have become the Haiti of today?" To write a reasonably short Musing on the paradox of Haiti is no easy task. Still, it is a troubling paradox, a blight on our confidence that another evolutionary upheaval by 'Mother Nature' is not on the horizon or maybe even under way. I have trouble with Time. It is such a vast entity, far too vast to relate to realistically with our short minuscule focus of the concept.
Suffering is a part of life, which generates an underlying sadness to my otherwise genial disposition. Age, which to myself and many others, brings a degree of contentedness, also creates a melancholy underbelly to any contentedness. I never cry, a limitation that is of debatable value, but age brings with it the oft-time feeling that I want to cry. Sometimes I want to cry because I am so happy for someone or some situation, and other times I want to cry because I feel deep empathy with the misfortune of someone or some situation. There is often a lot of vicarious emotions in old age. Much of human suffering is unnecessary. It is this unnecessary suffering which is tough to accept. Fortunately with the passage of time, the evolutionary process generates more and more ways to alleviate unnecessary suffering via an improved ethical nature of humankind. In that sense, much of what saddens me today, will pass with Time. Still, to look into the eyes of a malnourished refugee dying from their predicament is simply an unbearable realization. And, to a great extent, that is the Haiti of today---vast numbers of people barely existing in a hell hole created by a history of human limitations and failed ethics.
There can be no mistake about it---slavery has repercussions. Destruction of natural resources has repercussions. Lack of justice has repercussions. Absence of opportunity has repercussions. Overpopulation has repercussions. Unlimited greed has repercussions. Intolerance for diversity has repercussions. Endless and pervasive exploitation of one country by other countries has repercussions. When all these factors and others happen to a population all at once you end up with Haiti.
It would be hard to guess what percentage of, let's say, the American population think of Haitians as a bunch of ignorant, immoral, lazy, inferior humans who have brought all this tragedy unto themselves. From these unsympathetic accusers out comes some variation of "God Bless America", followed by "thanks be to God that we are not like them." I, for example, have never done a single thing to harm any Haitian. So why should I feel some non definable sadness about their plight? I do so because I am part of a culture that imposed this plight on Haiti and so many other situations like Haiti. I didn't personally kill any Vietnamese. Yet I supported a culture which allowed the massacre of 2 million Vietnamese. It took myself and Barry Goldwater a long time to understand our responsibility for what happened over there. By the time I stood at the Vietnamese Memorial in Washington and thought about the 35,000 American deaths and the 2 million Vietnamese dead, my guilt in the sordid affair was clear enough. The only heroes in that war were the draft deserters who simply refused to participate in such a senseless slaughter. The dead, both American and the Vietnamese, were the victims.
If I can take the liberty to condense the Haitian situation into an oversimplified sequence of events it will help to understand the implications for other countries who probably think such a chain of events can never happen to their country. Frankly, if you are my age, then in moments when it seems some sort of calamity is about to close in on our own population, it often gets boiled down to a conclusion like this: "Oh, the hell with it. I'll be dead before the shit hits the fan." We hear some form of this response a lot today from my generation
Modern Haiti is, in essence, a huge refugee camp. The forests are gone (2% of the original forests remain) and the rains have washed away the good topsoil, so essentially all their food has to be shipped in. There is no educational system worth the title so the population is essentially uneducated. One quarter of the economy is taken up by money sent into Haiti from former Haitians living elsewhere, sending the money to their relatives. Most Haitians live on roughly $1/day. The government has no idea how many schools there are much less regulate them. A third of Haiti's teachers have never completed the equivalent of 9th grade. Well over 50% of buildings in Haiti are unsafe and should be razed. A third of the population today is crowded into a very crowded city right on a fault line. The living conditions are so bad that only a few thousand foreigners live in Haiti. A sizable portion of the population suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from earthquakes, crime, health events, etc. There is 1 physician for every 4000 people. The unemployment rate is somewhere between 40 and 70 percent. Seventy percent of the population is under 30. Haiti is the most impoverished country in the Americas. The politics of Haiti is toxic and violent. Of the 48 heads of state 22 have been overthrown, 2 were assassinated, one was executed, one committed suicide, nine were figurehead presidents, and 4 were puppets propped up during U.S. occupation of the country (1915-1935). Most of these stats are taken from the book The Big Truck That Went By written by Jonathan M. Katz.
There were 15.4 million refugees worldwide at the end of 2012 and roughly 100 million people are homeless. Compare that with the 3000 deaths from the World Trade Center. 50% of the world's population live on less than $2.50/day. 1 billion children live in poverty. The number of children who die each day due to poverty is 22,000. 640 million children live without adequate shelter. In 1820 the ratio of people in poverty to wealthy was 3:1, In 1950 it was 35:1, in 1992 it was 72 to 1. The point here is that 'new' Haiti's are being developed as we read this. Even a country such as the U.S. has trends in this direction in every category. Is life as it exists in Haiti now going to become the norm for most every country?
As these statistics play out in virtually every country on our globe, including the U.S., the reaction is more indifference and anger than empathy. Those with the affluence, the power, the tax breaks, the tax shelters, the huge inheritances, good education, good health care, good pensions, good job opportunities, and good job security are often incensed that so much of 'their' money is going for food stamps, welfare of various kinds, housing for the poor, jail costs for the violent poor, etc. A real irritant is that many of the poor don't even pay ANY income tax. Somewhere, in the tirade that self centered individuals emit about the burden of these economic dependents, comes some form of "As far as I am concerned these parasites can do like me and earn the money to take care of themselves. And if they don't tough." I think all this might be fair enough with one caveat. We would need take away from these "I earned it cabal" all the unearned benefits they may have been endowed with at birth: certain genes, good parents, good neighborhood, good health care, safe environment, good schools, adequate adult support and role models, etc. Certainly none of these things were earned. After we remove all this, let's grant them income tax exemption by reducing their income to the level needed to be excused from paying any income tax. And, if by chance, they are one of the wealthy whose tax breaks and tax havens are abundant enough to escape with paying a small percentage of their income on income taxes, or may not even have to pay at all---well let's maybe just give them a mandatory sentence of treasonable greed against society. When enough is never enough, for those who worship the God of money, power, and titles then the victims of this greed end up vwinf forced to pay the piper---and the piper spouting off about "I earned all this myself".
Haiti is the end product of humanity gone awry. Every cruel existing condition in Haiti is the consequences of ignorant and selfish human behavior. Haiti is now a country pretty much devoid of trees, topsoil, plants, wildlife, fresh water, personal safety, decent schools, hospitals, health care, domestic food production, gainful employment, social tranquility, or individual opportunities. Haiti started off as the land of opportunity, and to the first European settlers a sort of Heaven on Earth. Rather than try to emulate this 'Heaven" in their own countries, all the riches and labor of Haiti were exploited for material gains. Everything in the way of this expatiation was wantonly destroyed and not the least of which were the inhabitants of the Island themselves---first the native Indians, then African slaves, then freed slaves right on down to the current inhabitants. When social or natural disasters hit Haiti other countries provide billions of dollars of relief. The relief efforts are sincere enough, but almost all of the money spent essentially is poured back into the foreign industries and companies which supply the relief. The only economies which benefit are the economies of the countries providing the relief. And thus individual Haitians may get enough water, food and blankets to survive another day, but that another day is just as poor and sorry-ass as any other day before the disaster, and often just worse.
Relief workers seldom hang around in places like Haiti. They become disillusioned by the hopelessness of the situation and the shenanigans of the trapped population of citizens who live there. What is the average Haitian who lives on the island suppose to think of these relief aid workers who manage sometimes to keep them alive but rarely with any means to escape their pervasive hopelessness? At no point, when each time other countries rush in to 'save' Haiti, are the residents going to see any chance for good schools, good health care, good jobs, safe neighborhoods, personal freedom, good homes, or any of the other such matters which are needed for the 'good life' as so many of the rest of us already have.
The ending of this musing has no detectable silver linings. It took hundreds of years to destroy the bountiful blessings of nature on this island. It would take hundreds of years to restore this lost bounty of nature to the point where it could sustain a population of humans. We can babble on about quality of government, religion, culture, generosity of foreign aid, politics, capitalism, socialism, human rights, and so on, BUT----what is there really left to do but clear the island of humans and let nature restore the island to be inhabitable again---and we know there is no chance of this happening. Who would take any of the current inhabitants? And more to the point, which of the events which destroyed Haiti----human overpopulation, destruction of forests, loss of topsoil, loss of jobs, rampant health problems, poor schools for too many, lopsided distribution of wealth---which of these problems is being solved anywhere's else on earth? Nowhere.
Hold on to your hats, this ride into the future is going to be with a whole lot 'bumpin' going on. Should we sit and worry ourselves to death? Not really. Mother Nature bats last. If we stifle our noise we can hear Her footsteps coming. As Lincoln advised us: "Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." Our individual ability to do that generates the meaning of our lives, to reap contentment for individual duty done. God's evolutionary process will take care of the future, as it always has for millions of years.
