If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Ben Gibbard
There is a heavy, foreboding sadness that sits heavy on my heart when I read the books of people who have thrown themselves into the darkness that erodes the life of the earth, facing the actions of other human beings that we desperately try to blind ourselves to, the horrors and devastation that beget more human life in the depths of violence and despair, it eats at me, the urge to try and find a way to help too; and it irks me, the excuses people make to ignore it. It may be said that it is fair to demoralize the movements of humanitarian authors through life by pointing out their grammatical mistakes, their haphazard stories written in scattered lines, brought into existence as the memories of these stories come to mind. These memories often interrupt each other in the process of being born into words on mortal paper, pushing others out of the way, struggling for breath in an overwhelming current of emotion, fear and demoralizing repression. Fairness is objective in reading and telling a story, and to demolish the morality of a story simply for its surreal representation is an action immoral and thus hypocritical. We all do it; we are human, and we are argumentative by nature. There is nothing left to argue once we have argued against the compassionate action of another, whose moral actions we cannot live up to. We find our faults in the triumphs of others, but are wont to blame ourselves, so we take the easy road and blame them for being narcissistic, unrealistic, and ignorant: of “martyring themselves”.
In A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon, she is asked by a “thoughtful, politically aware friend” why she would “'help women there [in the Congo], where it's a total mess? Why not help other needy women someplace where it is stable?'” (Shannon, 45). I've had this question posed to me before in the midst of heated debate about some aspect of violence and injustice in the world, posed in some form or another. How is it right to only focus on the injustice in the stable parts of the world, and not the injustice that occurs in the “unstable” areas of the world? Is a third-world country no longer worth the notice of a first world country? Are our first-world problems more important than that of a third-world country? Is the rape and violence against women in the Congo less important than the rape and violence against women in America? When presented with these types of morally hypocritical questions, I never have an answer to hand to the one posing them, only more questions, which only leads to more debate and heated assertions of their right to an opinion, or their right to believe that the problems around them should come first. There are so many problems in so many places that one person can never see them all at once, and often they become overwhelmed by the sheer voracious capacity of problems in the world. “One thing at a time” as my mother always said.
In the introduction of A Thousand Sisters by Zainab Salbi, she writes that “we see that in every story of injustice there is a movement for the good, one in which there are always survivors who decide to dedicate their lives to ending it, as well as those who have not been victims but know of their moral responsibility to stand up and fight” (Shannon, Salbi, 12). Many people experience difficulty in understanding their own moral responsibility, and recognizing where to begin in addressing that responsibility. Our own lives can be overwhelming enough, and we use this as an excuse to ignore our ethical responsibility to the rest of the global community. Our sense of community, as my communications professor Robert Wuagneux once said, has deteriorated; We are so independently minded and dependent on virtual communities as proxies that we no longer recognize our instinctive need for communities around us. Where we once depended on the physical communities that we lived in, we now depend only on the virtual representation, and while technology is a tool that could certainly help us to expand our communities, we only draw inwards away from socialization and towards seclusion. Our virtual communities (social networks like Facebook) encourage a detached approach to communication, one which encourages us to “vocalize” opinions which we would otherwise inhibit. This can be positive, but often will turn negative – our immorality is only heightened by this lack of true socialization. Hurt feelings are easy to ignore, or even premeditate on. Consequences remain unaddressed or forgotten. Thus our general mindset evolves in everyday life to encompass this dispassionate existence.
This idea of impartial existence is outlined in the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. In a letter written by Chris McCandless to an elderly man who took him in for a short period, he writes “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind...” (Krakauer, 56). McCandless is speaking of giving up security in life to enjoy the unrestrained, raw joy that naturally waits for us here in life. His statement is, unfortunately, fundamentally flawed by cracks manifested with naivete, in that the argument can be used both ways. Although he is speaking in reference to the American middle class, his statement could be turned inside out to argue, for example, that the women of the Congo are inherently responsible for their lives. Or it could also be used to argue that the people of the Congo must enjoy life immensely, because each day is insecure, and the chaos around them prevents any kind of conformity. McCandless, while intuitive to the overlooked joys of life and the freedom we take for granted in western society, seems sadly ignorant to the weight of his statements and philosophies outside the American standard of living. Often unsaid, this same ignorance pervades the lives of many in all first world countries. Our beliefs, whether we like it or not, reflect the same flag of ignorance, which we have yet to pull down. It seems that McCandless withdrew from society in a flagrant effort to understand his self-worth, his knowledge, and his deeply personal evolving spirituality. Near the end of his life, he wrote, “happiness is only real if shared”. This journey made him realized that withdrawing from people, into himself, and into the wilderness, would never really make him truly happy. For him, happiness is only enjoyable if it is in concert with another person, with other human beings. I think this same rule applies to our global community; although we must all walk a solitary path to truly appreciate the need for community. Boiled down, I think this was the point McCandless was trying to make.
To argue is to provoke thought, which in turn assists in ushering in change. Sometimes, I believe, our thought processes run astray, we become self-harming narcissists only arguing to our own ends, not the ends of those we are supposedly arguing for. In “My Mother's Lover” by David Dobbs, he realizes after his mother's death that he had ignored the story of her illicit World War II ERS pilot lover because of the cultural taboos imbued in the bones of his mother, her life and, ultimately, his life as well. The story, in and of itself, means nothing outside of being a deeply personal journey for Doobs and his self discovery, awareness, and understanding. Sex and love and private passion are topics that are largely ignored, especially when they also incorporate infidelity and take place during an era when things like “things like this just didn't happen”. Such a story in a primarily right-wing Christian society is viewed with conspicuous side-glances and large doses of suspicion. We question the integrity of the soul that the person carries, as if loving someone other than the one they are married to is an act so heinous it cannot be redeemed, and we close our mouths and swallow our tongues to avoid discussion of it. Whether we speak of sex in terms of infidelity, or we speak of sex in terms of intrusion, violence, and rape, the conversation itself is looked down upon. Our values are skewed – original messages are buried and new meanings are dug up from between the letters. Human beings, but most especially those who are embedded in western culture, have developed an ironically strict ignorance of the world around them, and the processes of the world around them: an ignorance which serves to blind us to the hurtful nature of something which should be fun. “Don't ruin it for me”, is a common enough response to a conversation about rape.
I see the problems of our world in incredibly naïve ways – as if we may all run in and solve those problems if “only we'd work together”. This is a seriously flawed sense of security, which reflects not only my upbringing, but my culture. Inevitably, we come to realize the grave, unbearable weight of reality. Light of inspiration and enlightenment fades. Our previous hopes and dreams whither, as if they are only leaves on a dying tree and not a spark that is kept alive by an instant of inspiration. This is the easy way out – this is the beggar's escape, the romantic's disillusioned ignorance. We live our lives drowning in darkness we could easily pull ourselves out of, because we'd rather keep the blindfold on than tear it off and face the world with our eyes open.
Works Cited
Dobbs, David. My Mother's Lover. Vol. 5. Atavist, 2011.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 2007. Print.
Shannon, Lisa. A Thousand Sisters: My Journey of Hope into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2010. Print.
