Life As a Gated Goal
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Author Notes about this Blog
Life As a Gated Goal
For people like myself, kind of living in the best of all possible worlds, our goals, aspirations, and efforts are essentially, when viewed from the broadest perspective, little more than an endless struggle to build a life gated off from reality.
What is reality? This is a term whose definition requires more brain power than all or most of us really have. So I reckon my use of the word above refers to some sort of majority existence. Early on we learn that life is not particularly fair, ethical or tolerant, and is seeped in diversity, unescapable tragedies for many, seeped in chance, emotions, wants, fears, regrets, hopes, effort, uncertainty, and unpredictability. Despite all this, most people value life, albeit for so many it would be hard to explain exactly what it is that they value.
I know, and we all probably know, even if we won't acknowledge it, that our lives would be so different if we had been born to different parents, in a different time, in a different environment. These variables are so drastically varied that any personal orientation to reality is elusive. One thing is obvious, when we were born we certainly did not earn any of our 'environment' or 'genetics'----whether good or bad. An egg and sperm hooked up, both from already living cells, and we arrived in the world with a hand of cards dealt us, not earned in any remote way.
Everyone should read the book by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thompson titled Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures). The Title is misleading in that it sort of suggests it is a tawdry sex adventure of some sort. But actually, it is a well written account describing the lives of three humanitarian aide workers who were involved in countries like Rwanda, Haiti, Somalia, Cambodia, Liberia, and Bosnia. For those of us who live in some sort of Best of All Possible Worlds, reading this book is about the only way to envision the life of those who live in the Worst of All Possible Worlds.
Relating to this 'other' world is rather incomprehensible to the rest of us, and worst of all, it is hard not to arrive at the ghastly conclusion that most of the world, in varying degrees, is more like this 'worst' world than the world in which we live. In fact, the majority, or increasingly near-majority of people who live in our own country, live more in a world like this 'worst' world than any world we ourselves live in. I have no more contact with the world of inner city Detroit or Newark, or LA, or Chicago, or Washington D.C, or Birmingham, etc than I do with those who live in Rwanda or Haiti. I love to wander around Chicago as part of my almost daily wanderings in nature, or the city of Chicago, but I sure as hell don't wander around the majority parts of Chicago. Like most others I gate myself off from these areas. I do see some of them on the city trains and buses, but mostly I just wonder about their lives. Change the environment and I guess that could be me sitting there all raggedy-dressed, or with an aura of 'don't even think of messing with me" (I don't), or just a picture of having no good cards in their life's hand.
It is hard to let a book like Emergency Sex go. So I wonder just what percentage of people in the world live, in varied degrees, in this other world so different from the one of my daily life. As an educated guess, if I can use this phrase lightly, I suppose most of the people in the United States, most of Europe, Australia, Canada, and maybe a few other places, live more like me. But wow, that leaves most of the people in South America, Central America, Russia, China, India, Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Near East, all mired to varying degrees in this other, 'worst of all possible worlds."
It is not the poverty itself so much which is ghastly, but the inhumanity of humanity in these places. Life simply has so little value. It is understood that people can be poor and still contented, often far more contented than the wealthy. BUT, and this is the kicker, there is no real personal security at all in these countries, and whatever 'little world' of contentment achieved can be cruelly, abruptly, and savagely upended at most any moment. And when this happens these humanitarian aid workers end up exposed to a form of human civilization that is not civilized at all. Change in these countries does not involve simply some sort of economic shift from one group to another but unimaginable acts of cruelty to others which have no reasonable basis, and no limits to the torture and hatred regarding the acts committed on others. No one is exempt from the most heinous cruelty including young children, women, pregnant women, old people, pets, spouses, and so on. No horror movie could be more repugnant and frightening than these real life upheavals. Everything about this 'other' world becomes unimaginable to those of us in 'the best of all possible worlds'.
Here are two extreme examples taken from the book:
"These were unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, almost all died of blunt or sharp-force trauma. They were hacked or clubbed to death, or both….This is an average massacre by Rwandian standards, unremarkable in scale or circumstance. Several thousand civilians had gathered in the church grounds, promised protection by the Hutu governor. Hutu militias went methodically through the crowd instructing other Hutus to leave, and government soldiers cut off the escape routes….It's hard work killing that many people in a confined space with only machetes and clubs, so the killers returned home to their families each night to rest and drink before the next day's work. It took three days and so far we know of only two survivors."
Here's one from Liberia:
"There is an area in the south where a Nigerian ECOMOG contingent (A UN peace force) was deployed for several months this summer. They were in the habit of encouraging very young Liberian girls from the nearby displaced persons camp to visit and 'seducing' them with rice and a little money. The girls were nine or ten. Then a Ghanaian ECOMOG contingent established a camp nearby. The Ghanaians were more gentle and generous with the girls. They would give them a whole can full of rice as opposed to the more paltry handful from the Nigerians. So the girls started frequenting the Ghanaian camp more than the Nigerian. One day dead little girls started appearing on the path from the displaced persons camp to the Ghanaian camp---but not on the path to the Nigerians. The girls had been decapitated and their heads inserted inside their nine-year-old genitals. In the opinion of the investigating officer, this was a message to the girls from the Nigerians that it wouldn't be worth it to frequent the Ghanaians for the sake of a little extra rice.
And these are the peacekeepers"
I blame most of this nightmare on human overpopulation, communities who are fighting for limited natural resources in ways which are devoid of any lofty humaneness. It is not enough to acquire the meager wealth of others but the most horrid forms of genocide must be used in the process. Take Rwanda, the government could have ordered guns to give out to the Hutus to kill the Tutus, but instead the government ordered machetes to achieve their goals. That is beyond understanding, but no more so than the willingness of 'good' people to actually use these machetes on their neighbors. If push comes to shove, am I capable of this kind of behavior towards others who have never personally harmed me? Yet every time one cabal of humans commits attempted genocide of another group, the vast majority of those in that cabal go along with the atrocities, and actively, or at least passively, participate.
It is hard to understand what we should think of all this which is going on in most of the world today. Life on this planet has been going on for billions of years and human life for hundreds of thousands of year. The process is brilliant enough and the laws which control the process seem to apply to every species with no exceptions, and thus we can assume the future will bring positive changes---eventually---to the imperfections still existing in human behaviors. What is hard to envision is whether our own species will improve with time, as it has in the past, or whether a new and 'better' species will evolve after our species manages to implode upon itself. In other words, are we the last species to evolve? The best I can do at this stage of my life, is wander and wonder.
