sound off

So, for the past 2 days I've found myself feeling rather angry - angry about work stuff, angry about world events, angry about dumb stuff from the gay Dumbledore down to the unrelenting tiny ants storming my kitchen, and of course, angry about the dumb guy trying to sell the "pet" raccoon. I confess, I can only go so long without engaging in a debate and I think it's been far too long, so perhaps my need to spend 2 hrs at the track last night to burn off anger was partially due to a long overdue need to argue about something. So here I am, ready to sound off about at least one of the topics burning me this week.

Inspired by photos snapped by a friend in D.C. over the weekend, my target, a-hem, topic for the day is protesters, more specifically the protesters at the World Bank - IMF meetings in D.C. When I first saw the photos, I found myself becoming instantly angry, though uncertain as to why, not at my friend for taking the pictures, but at the protesters themselves. Is it wrong that I think they appear incredibly selfish? There they are, doing what on the surface may appear as a very selfless act to some - protesting things such as the debt held against poor nations. However, all I could see were people who appeared to be more concerned with being seen and heard than they were about what they were saying. Making a spectacle of oneself, and therefore diverting all the attention to oneself, detracts attention from the cause one would have us believe there is actual conviction about.

I didn't see people who cared about a cause nearly as much as getting their 15 minutes of fame. I think it's selfish because I think if they really cared about something, they'd see their time and energy could be put to far more constructive uses with greater reach and benefit. If they really cared, I don't believe they'd be engaged in the street debauchery of puppets, dances, chants and cheers, street theater, music, marches, stripping, and sit-ins. What useful and constructive purpose do they convey? What message is actually being sent to the World Bank, IMF, the nation, and the world at large? See me, notice me? Are they really revolting and rebelling because of a cause or merely using a cause as an excuse to revolt and rebel in general?

If they really care, then step up! Truly sacrifice or do something meaningful in a way that's really going to benefit others. Example, globally, people are impoverished, starving, and homeless. Don't dance on streets crying out for the right of those who have no roads to walk on. Do something real, or shut up! Is it unreasonable to consider that a homeless person doesn't care that you protest how money is being controlled or directed, but that you cared enough to meet them where they are and helped them build a home?

Do something real, or go home! Money does no good when you have nothing to buy with it. I saw this firsthand in Haiti. The people who had a chance, a real chance at a better life, weren't those handed money, but those who outsiders cared about enough to go and take the time to educate on how to have a better life with the very little they had. How to make that very little grow until it was not just enough for them but others as well. Teaching people to care for the land, to think communally rather than individually, to think about tomorrow and not just today, teaching trades and handicrafts, farming, irrigation, how to purify water to make it safe for drinking are examples of ways that real people are making a real difference in the immediate and long-term needs in the lives of others. People are not simply being provided with education and skills, but perhaps for the first time ever in their life, hope. They're also learning how living for today is destroying their tomorrow and the benefits of community. Another example: I'm now living in a country where the lives of my friends are significantly better than those of their parents just a few decades ago, thanks largely to international trade.

Face reality. Though they can be eased and the burden lightened, such serious and widespread problems as poverty, disease, homelessness, starvation, and civil war can never be solved or eradicated because the hearts of men are selfish and corrupt. Not the hearts of the faceless men who drive world finance and business, but of those belonging to the faces in the mirror. One of my favorite passages in Blue Like Jazz (and there are sooo many) is when Miller writes:

I am the problem.
(There comes a time when one must) stop blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and start to face himself.
The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.
I don't have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.
True change would have to start with the individual.

After his own experience protesting for social justice for the oppressed concluded, "I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read 'I AM THE PROBLEM!' "

While canceling debts is a nice gesture, the action is still incredibly limited in the good it will do without a true willingness on behalf of a country's government and people to commit to change in improving the quality of life. I'm not suggesting that money doesn't factor into the problem, but rather that there are even greater giants standing in the way of reducing poverty, famine, violence, wars, etc.

Finally, as an American abroad, I feel like I fight sterotypes every day. The people who judge me are often ignorant and limited in their knowledge of daily life in America and American culture. They know what they're fed by media, which as I've seen, even influences what they're taught about Americans in schools and at home. When our media feeds the world crap about what we're like, it's no wonder the world has such a low opinion of us. And too many seem to relish in the splendor of putting their best crap forward, on display for the world's criticism. In the end, no one cares how much money and aid, both in material resources and manpower we give to other nations. They care how foolish, selfish, ethnocentric, and egotistical we appear, and sometimes downright are. Why else would we parade ourselves in the streets singing and dancing about something as serious as hunger and poverty?

Do I think protesting in and of itself is wrong? No. Do I think it, at times, can be incredibly selfish considering the alternatives? You betcha! Don't just say that you care, show it!