"Abandon all hope (...all ye who enter here)" - Dante's Inferno, iii, 9
What are we to do? The news informs us that threats are omnipresent and conflict is seemingly always on the horizon. But that is what is extracted from an egoist's perspective. How will these threats affect me; my wage-earning potential, my lifestyle, and my way of life? Darfur is rarely seen as anything other than a moral issue. People feel outrage. Lamentation is a reflex; pity the logical reaction. Nietzsche was dead-on about pity. It is merely a feeling attached to passivity. But when confronted with Darfur or Kosovo or Auschwitz, what can we do? We can fight, but not in the way the hawks intend. The battle of good and evil ends in total destruction. But total destruction is, for misguided people of faith, the destiny of the chosen people, to bring about the End. Crusades to purge the world of evil unleashes the possibility that everything will perish. This natural world, fearsome yet utterly enchanting, is our fragile partner in life. A single misstep in the field of diplomacy, as was the case during the Cold War and is now the case during these dangerous times, and this world and humanity may be snuffed out in an instant. The stakes are high. We can never forget that. The world is larger than ourselves. It is more substantive than our laptops, cell phones, IPods, careers, sex lives, accolades, and wealth. All of that can evaporate in an instant.
So what to do about Darfur? We are only human. But to take a position of pity or detached compassion allows problems which underlie the tragedy to fester. Can we act in a meaningful way? Not without genuine thought. The problems are philosophical. The solutions are necessarily political. We cannot reduce "compassion" to a social norm, and the plight of the African people as representative of "a pitiful state of affairs". History, although not the irrefutable truth, tells us that the current condition, including those in Darfur and the Congo, are products of colonialism. But is marching against corporations going to change anything? Maybe. Does it further an understanding of the situation without retreading the me-good/ corporation-evil logic shared by the civilized-heathens dichotomy that justified economic, cultural, and political exploitation? In order to truly understand the situation, and hence starting to think genuinely about it, people who watch the news must begin to see the subjects of those stories as their fellow human beings, rather than the perpetual victim or the archetype of victimhood. Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez once confessed that his grandmother, a vibrant oral storyteller, deserved the award more than he did. The difference - as he noted - was that he had the opportunity to learn to read and write, to struggle with words and literary matters rather than matters of subsistence and survival. That is how I see the African people. I stand neither above nor below. They are my fellows in this weird, absurd, and often dangerous journey called life. The tragedy is, of course, the journey is more dangerous for some. But pity and sentiment does little to alter that.
So what about Iran? Is the inscription above the gates of hell - found in the text of Dante's Inferno - an inescapable fate in the case of Iran? Hiroshima and Nagasaki are reminders that the arbitrary definition between good and evil is utterly absurd. The "evil" other obtaining the means to annihilate the world may not be the most disconcerting development. Rather, the anxious actions of the "good", done in the interest of righteousness, may lead to doom. The payload of the Enola Gay was unleashed for the "greater good", to ensure less lives would be lost in securing victory for the Allies. But it opened up Pandora's box . It set a dangerous precedent. The calculation made by Allied strategists took into consideration a present situation, the Second World War, but failed to consider that a supposedly prudent, i.e. utilitarian calculation, move would unleash doom upon future generations. One of the pilots of the Enola Gay, as the story goes, committed suicide soon after Hiroshima. He may have never come to terms with the idea that he took part in an act that would loom over soul of humanity for generations to come. Thus, it may not be Iran who should be feared as the initiator of mass destruction.
In the case of nuclear arms, it is sometimes better not to think about it. However, there is rarely bliss found in ignorance. There is no hope to be found within the catacombs of indifference. Meaningful existence is not simply the fulfillment of a doomed prophecy. Rather, it is the intelligent and thoughtful confrontation of the dangers that arise in life. Do we abandon all hope? Or will we work towards redemption? The former is undemanding and facilitates a return to world of minutia, no larger than individual contentment. The latter is incredibly demanding. It calls for courage and spirit, and provides no tangible or immediate rewards for the self. The temptations of the former are often too resplendent to resist. And the latter cannot be taken on lightly. Only through pained thought can genuine action come about.
