| Username |
Post |
| Sunita |
Posted
on 16-Jun-01 12:09 AM
Hundreds of poor die because of diahhorea and no one cries. 10 privilegde royals die and there are weeks of mourning. How much has been spent on ritual, pujas, flowers, etc for the privledged few but where is the money to imporve the conditions of the poor, and underpriviledged in Nepal. Priorities are out of order. Death is better than life in Nepal. There is no doubt about that.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 16-Jun-01 03:10 AM
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, not all deaths are of equal importance as far as the public at large is concerned.
Some human beings are more valuable, simply more interesting or more newsworthy than others -- and that's one of sad facts of life.
If one dies in a mini-bus accident in Gaushala, one barely gets mentioned in a newspaper in Nepal.
But, for discussion's sake, if the same person dies two kilometers away from Gaushala -- say, at or above the Tribhuwan Airport, say, in a plane crash, then, not only will that person's name be printed in a newspaper, but his/her family can also claim hefty insurance money.
Surely, something about this example above the one about the diarrhoea deaths vis-a-vis the Royal deaths must offend our
sense of justice in some way.
If so, how then do we work out defensible principles/theories to justify our feelng offended? What do others say?
oohi
ashu
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| Namita Kira-Thuene |
Posted
on 18-Jun-01 11:46 AM
Hi Sunita and Ashu,
I am trying to answer these abusurdities of life. I may fail miserably but thought it was worth trying. Some deaths are barely mentioned and some mourned for weeks not if not for months for some spoiled royals. Death in a bus of a penniless beggar in Gausahala vs death of a rock star in a private jet plane.
That is right I said 'absurdities,' and that is what exactly it is. This world is not fair, nobody promised us we will get equal treatment before we were born. Your next door neighbor has 2 mercedez in his driveway and a vacation house in Cape Cod, 2 hundred yards away you see a homeless person probably mentally ill asking for some shelter and food. Every nook and cranny you see these disparity. Does that mean we are just a bunch of hypocrite? We are the kind who cannot shed a tear for say people dying from diarrhea in a rural nepal? Just to feel a little better about myself I would like to mention I wrote few months back in this site about afgani refugee children dying from exposure and hunger. And I did shed some tears for them then. I said in one of the postings here about this royal massacare: "a tragedy is a tragedy is a tragedy whther it occurs in a palace or in any place." Do I feel superior because I personally give every death equal amounty of my emotional time? I don't. I do think about deaths time to time and wonder about it. How does a society experience a death?
We don't need to feel morally superior because we may have a balance view on any subjects, especially on deaths like these two broad types as Ashu and Sunita pointed out. The whole world does not make sense. The only way I somewhat manage to understand this world is by what Kafka and Camus points out. Life is absurd. Remember 'The Stranger?' Say, the degree of absurdity is 90 degrees and the "real" world operates/functions in maybe 3 degrees. That is where all the santa mahanta especially gautam Buddha comes in. I would like to come to as close as possible to this 3 degree. If we try to just feel superior becasue we think others are not mourning enough then that is a fallacy.
It is an irony of living to see such an ineqality of living, dying, mourning, spending too much money, dying of hunger, dying of eating too much. How do you understand this? The answer lies in HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND, not in finger pointing.
I would like to write something from buddhist thoughts, "have right opinion, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right exertion, right thought and right self-concerntration."
Namita
ps the only fallacy i see in this particular (diarrhea) death is it was preventable. Then i really get angry at the govt. of Nepal. but then, I take a deep breath and I focus on how can I change this world in my own small way? by opening a foster care? adopting a child? giving some time in a homeless shelter? send money home? the opportunities are endless...
pps there will be many many spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes but there are other important things in life. get over it :)
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| sally |
Posted
on 18-Jun-01 01:31 PM
Sunita, I felt something similar after the Columbine shootings. I remember thinking that while those parents at least had the support of the public as they grieved for their unbearable losses, other parents were going through equally unbearable griefs that day–grief over children who died in car crashes, of diarrhea, cholera, violence, and on and on.
So why do some tragedies call forth a response from millions of people, while others are barely mentioned? Why are some griefs "mass," while others are "personal"?
My sense of a "mass mourning"--like the mourning over Columbine, plane crashes, and even JFK jr.--is that it involves a mass of people precisely because it IS personal to so many people. Not "personal" in the sense of some personal sense of sadness over people we don't know. But "personal" in the sense that it threatens our sense of security and stability.
Sometimes this kind of news threatens us literally, as in the case of the royal massacre (which can destabilize Nepal), or imaginatively (as in the case of a plane crash on a route we are likely to travel).
But what does that tell us about, say, the mass mourning over celebrities such as JFK jr? After all, few people truly identified with him.
Well, I think that ultimately comes down to a sense of stability also. It seems to me that there's a way in a which our personal sense of security and stability includes an attachment to an image of the world. When we mourn the royal family, we're also mourning the loss of a particular image of Nepal: the place of monarchy in its history, its mythos, and so on. Even the deaths of JFK jr., or of Dodi and Di--celebrities whose deaths did not at all affect the future of any nation--were riveting in part because they were part of peoples' image of the world on a mythic level.
Interestingly, the royal massacre has gotten a lot less coverage in the US than the plane crash of JFK jr., when CNN broadcast hour after hour of nothing but a reporter standing by the waves waiting for news. I think that's because news from Nepal is NOT personal to most Americans. For most Americans, not only does the royal massacre bring with it no potential threat to ourselves, our futures, or our loved ones--it doesn't even require the remaking of their own mental world.
When it comes to the diarrhea deaths, I think part of our sense of outrage comes from the instinctive realization that all lives, and all griefs, are equal. Most of us know that our own tragedies, and the tragedies of our loved ones, are more likely to be recorded in a few inches buried deep in a newspaper rather than emblazoned in headlines. On the great scale of justice, in which every soul has equal weight, it seems deeply unjust.
But I think a "mass mourning" is easier to understand when we recognize that it's not ultimately about mourning individual lives. On some level, it's also personal.
Still, you're right. The diarrhea deaths are just as tragic. And as a matter of fact, they are probably MORE destabilizing to Nepal-–taken as a whole, with all other such deaths-–than even the royal massacre. And in that sense, if we really are able to cultivate the sensitivity to see it, they SHOULD be just as personal as the royal deaths or a plane crash.
Thank you for reminding us of that.
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| Enquirer |
Posted
on 18-Jun-01 10:47 PM
Ok so 10 or more people died and the fact that they happen to be royalties, makes them appear in headline news and their death gets discussed even after three weeks of the incident.
There's nothing bizzare about this. You watch the NEWS all the time on TV, if the president claps he's zoomed in on TV, but if you're an audience and you clap who gives a fart? Underage driking happens all the time but when the presidents daughter does it, it appears in headline news. So is the way of this world. If you got money and/or power, well they go hand in hand, then the rest of the ones below you are looking at you observing your moves and your actions are noteworthy of news just because your money buys you your celebrity status.
If you don't believe me go to some remote village and live there for a month. You will instantly become sort of a celebrity and you are news!
I am surprised people have to discuss this. Money is power and everybody wants to feel good about their pathetic and mundane and boring and not-so-rich life by putting you down, check out the national enquirer for further info.
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| Manjari |
Posted
on 20-Jun-01 12:57 PM
The issue that Sunita has raised is definitely worthy of a good discussion.
Reading the responses following her comments, I was thinking
- how many of us actually had our sense of justice offended by the above example ?
- did it happen only after Sunita blatantly pointed it out and drew our attention towards it? or did it happen while reading the news ? or did we even notice the diarrhoea death news ?
I think any conscientious person would feel some sense of injustice in the way peoples' lives are valued depending on their social status. And I don't think that requires any justification.
Sally Said :
"My sense of a "mass mourning"--like the mourning over Columbine, plane crashes, and even JFK jr.--is that it involves a mass of people precisely because it IS personal to so many people. Not "personal" in the sense of some personal sense of sadness over people we don't know. But "personal" in the sense that it threatens our sense of security and stability."
That makes sense to me. It's easier to have a personal connection with the death of the royals rather than with the ones who died of diarrhoea ( bless their souls!). That could be because of the exposure they have ( the royals) had in the media, and ofcourse, almost every nepali knows what the King and Queen look like. The media people know this and they fully capitalize on that sense of connection we have with these people.
Sally Said:
"And in that sense, if we really are able to cultivate the sensitivity to see it, they SHOULD be just as personal as the royal deaths or a plane crash."
Why aren't we able to be that sensitive ? do we lack such compassion ? how do we cultivate the sensitivity ?
I must admit that I am guilty of that crime ( without any inferiority complex). The royals' death news had a bigger emotional impact on me compared to the diarrhoea death news. I do remember though, while reading the story, I felt that this news was being over shadowed by the bigger news of the royal massacre and felt sorry for those involved.
In my opinion, in our society, where we witness so much suffering, poverty, hardship, we get so desensitized due to the constant exposure that it doesn't shock us anymore. My Australian friend who was staying with my family in Nepal was appalled by the fact that we had a 14 year old working for us. She said " how could you guys make a poor child work for you ?", although my parents had tried their best to treat him well, providing him with all the basic needs ( food, shelter, clothes, good education) which he wouldn't have gotten if he had stayed with his parents. Yes, it is rather appalling, intellectually.
Maybe we all suffer from compassion fatigue - a symptom experienced by people who take care of people under extreme circumstances, volunteer workers, social workers, doctors, nurses etc. I've read the book reviews of this book in several places( I haven't had the chance to read it yet) : Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death by Susan Moeller, a Brandeis University journalism professor.
"We the public need to connect to stories, and when we do, it helps to circumvent our feelings that we are hopeless," says Susan Moeller.
"Very often, compassion fatigue or donor fatigue is the result of the feeling that, no matter what we do, it is ineffectual," she says.
(The above quotes from http://www.entango.org/about/articles/Dallas%20Morning%20News.Compassion%20fatigue.htm)
So I suppose our problem is; we fail to connect because we feel ( and are convinced) that there is no way we can help ( An excuse I often hear when talking about the situation of the country). For if we manage to connect and feel something, then our conscience urges us to take responsibility and to do something about the situation. It's better and much easier to stay numb.
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 20-Jun-01 02:27 PM
No man is an island entire of itself
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole.
Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for THEE.
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 20-Jun-01 02:28 PM
The previous poem was by John Donne.
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