Every day,
worldwide, around 200,000 people die. Last weekend, hundreds of these were in
76 people
died in Norway
Until
Saturday, when the death of Amy Winehouse, a twenty-seven year old singer,
addicted to alcohol and other drugs, took the top place in many newspapers and
TV news reports.
The death
of one person is experienced as a tragedy. The sudden, violent death of many is
seen as a catastrophe. The deaths of thousands are perceived as a statistic,
part of the way of the world.
Yet there
are other differences between the deaths of Amy Winehouse and the massacre in Oslo and Utøya on the one hand, and the daily dying going
on in East Africa on the other.
In the
first place, there was little anyone could do to avoid the first two. Amy
Winehouse was a tragic addict and addiction, particularly the polytoximanic form
with which she was afflicted, is generally fatal unless the sufferer him or
herself finally faces the consequences and takes that first necessary step –
the admittance of one’s own powerlessness and the sincere decision to seek and accept
help. Amy, unfortunately hadn’t reached that point before her body – in common
with others such as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin or Brian Jones, at the age of 27
– finally gave up under the strain of diverse poisons.
Anders
Breivik, according to all the accounts up to now, seems to have been a solitary
psychopath. While there has been, and will be, all kinds of speculation about
what could have been done to realise how close this particular psychopath was to finally unleashing his particular
version of horror on society, it remains a sad fact of life that a free society
will always remain marginally vulnerable to such risks – as was the case with
Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, or with Ted Kaczynski, the
Unabomber. Difficult though it may be for us to accept, the very freedom which
we regard as a fundament of our society gives rise to the space in which such
perverted personalities can find room to develop and plan their atrocities. Most
of them are, thankfully, too stupid or too obviously weird to allow them to
carry through their planning and execution before they are discovered and
stopped, but we will probably never be able to protect ourselves completely
from the cleverest and luckiest of them; not without abandoning our basic
principles of freedom and decency in favour of totalitarian state control (even
if it worked, which it doesn’t).
The famine
in Somalia (and, to a lesser extent, in Ethiopia and Kenya), in contrast, has
been a tragedy which is twenty years in the making and which many of those
familiar with the area have been foretelling for years. There has been no
effective government in the country since 1991. The current crisis is the
result of a combination of failing rains (something which frequently occurs in
this region), the longer-term consequences of overgrazing and deforestation by
subsistence farmers who have had no other choice it they wish to survive from day
to day and political failure and corruption, ideological idiocy and a series of
supremely hypocritical and morally bankrupt policies followed by all the local,
regional and global powers who have ever been involved with the place – from the
local Islamicist criminals controlling large areas of the country to the
various world powers whose only basic interest is the protection of their
shipping interests through naval patrols from desperate pirates operating from
this wreck of a former country.
In the
West, we bear a large part of the responsibility for what is happening in Somalia Indian Ocean before the Somali
coast without ever asking why desperate men decide to attack cargo ships in the
first place. Because their country has been wrecked by colonialism and
post-colonialism and, following the end of the proxy wars carried out worldwide
between the US
It has happened before and we were warned that it would
happen again if there weren’t substantial changes in the way we do things. And, like in 1985 with Live Aid and
all the other reactions that time to the famine in Ethiopia, we will see
reports of starving children on TV and will donate to the various NGOs and
semi-official agencies, from the Red Cross and Crescent, to the FAO, to Médecins Sans Frontières. And some of
that help will actually get to those who need it, despite administrative costs,
and bungling, and corruption, and politics, and robbery. And next year or the
year after the rains will come again and Somalia
The
aftermath of the death of Amy Winehouse and the massacres in
But I see
little hope for any real change as a result of the calamity emerging in the
Horn of Africa. Thousands will die, many more will suffer, some will be saved
as a result of aid. But, unless we start to look at the way we run our world (or
allow it to be run for us) on a much deeper level, it will happen again and
again.
Globalisation has become an accepted fact in the past twenty
years. But it means more than just being able to buy a cheap TV or smartphone,
assembled from parts bought all over the world on the other side of the globe,
being able to buy flowers cut yesterday in Kenya or eat strawberries in
January. It also means that we are all interconnected, in all sorts of ways,
with everybody else. And that means
that we too are, at some level, responsible for the fact that those children
are starving in Somalia
Like
demanding of our politicians and public representatives that they apply the
principles they so often praise in our own societies to our international
doings world-wide. Like looking at the values which really drive us as opposed
to those which we profess. Like accepting – individually and communally – that we
are responsible for the consequences of our actions and our inactions.
I’m not all
that very hopeful.
Pictures
retrieved from:
My heart is so heavy. This is the world I live in. I've done my share to help. I worked with drug addicts. I've taught and practiced tolerance. I've been involved in feeding Africa. Now I'm an old lady. I can say: Thank God, I'll be gone soon. But this is the world I'm leaving to my grandchildren. My heart is so heavy. It's hard to let it go. What else can we do? Eradicate ignorance. Open people's eyes. Try to find solutions.
ReplyDeleteAllow me to share your deeply compassionate Essay with my Facebook friends and family, hoping that it will be read and understood. Thank you for writing it.
My heart, my tears and my prayers are with Amy's parents, Somalia and Norway. I am my brothers'
keeper. May God sustain us all.
Claude, by all means feel free to repost this on FB - I would be honoured.
ReplyDeleteIt is often difficult not to succumb to cynicism and despair, sometimes hope is the only thing we have to keep us going.
By the way, nice to have you commenting again ... :-)
It's sad that while so many people hang on to their lives by a thread, someone with fame, money and talent throws theirs away. :-(
ReplyDeleteHi Francis, I did see a special report on this issue in Africa tonight on world news with Diane Sawyer and I was deeply touched. How we do take our precious lives for granted, just being able to eat everyday. I will forever "hope" that more attention is given to this cause to help end this suffering.
ReplyDeleteJanet
What can one say Francis. As ever you put the case far better than I could.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping that enough aid will get to those who desperately need it
This article was disturbing. The picture at the top was disturbing. The budget "agreement" is disturbing. I am just utterly disturbed now.
ReplyDeleteI really thought we were doing something to stop this kind of situation as I grew up. The truth now is that we were making it much worse. We grasped none of the nettles, one of which was population control through education and contraception.
ReplyDeleteI can remember believing the 'domino theory' on SE Asia and hearing nothing of the continuing imperialist side.
It's pretty obvious now that a hidden politburo has been governing us and democracy has been a sham.
Thinking on the depressive side, I found myself buoyed up through the cricket win against India, even though I don't really care much. Maybe we need stories about slaying bankers instead of dragons?
Just as I finished above it struck me we could have another kind of globalisation. Knowledge could be the global thing, with production made local. Somewhere in this, I fear we need some decent people with guns to do the initial policing. I can see the possibilities, but my hopes are low and I expect war.
ReplyDeleteBack from my carefree holidays, I see that you keep up the already high levels you set on your blog. What a rich text indeed, and to answer to all your strains of thought would mean that I'd encumber the Comments space with a whole blog post myself. So I'll just write down some impressions that come to mind spontaneously.
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame that there are still so many people dying of hunger today, that's a fact. Our responsability is another fact, too. And your analysis of the political and economical undercurrents is so accurate that I guess there's nothing much to add. I'm deeply touched by the misery experienced in Africa and, like you, almost desperate to know, deep inside, that even if I gave away all my money to some NGO, that wouldn't solve the problem. The worst thing, the most frustrating one perhaps, is that people are even almost starving in our own countries. Never in history have there been so many riches in our countries and so many really poor people. It's Chanel-suits and Gucci-bags living next to homeless people. And never in history have people learned so well to look the other way.
Of course, all of this is connected. The Greek crisis, European politicians (and politicians worldwide) being unable to find a just and sane solution; the programmed starvation in Somalia; the killing in Norway; even the death of Miss Whinehouse. All different sides of the same reality.
I really appreciate Dieter's thoughtful comment, especially that he mentions hunger and homelessness in our own countries.
ReplyDeleteThough I try to think globally and I keepup with the world's affairs as best I can, I feel that the only way I can get a grip on poverty and hunger is to act on a local level to do what I can: volunteer, donate to the local food bank and the local survival center which provides clothing and household items.
Recently, there was an article in the Boston Globe (I live in Massachusetts) that spoke of concerns of ER personnel who are seeing more and more malnourished children.
In summer, particularly, when school is not in session, many children are not getting enough to eat. Interestingly, studies point to early malnourishment leading to later adult obesity.
In the U.S., with the Pentagon and Wall Street getting all the money for their self-serving purposes, things can only get worse for the hungry and homeless.
If this is the case in a country like the U.S., what hope have we for solving the famine crisis globally?
A dismal picture, indeed.