It's often quipped that the logical result of studying humanity is misanthropy, and ... well, it's one of those things that has maybe too much bite to it.
I don't know any easy way to make things better, but maybe this will help: there are more people offended by the atrocities you name today than there were a century ago (modulo the atrocities which are new to today, compared to those of 1910). Less of this is considered normal or decent or acceptable than used to be. Simply disapproving may not seem like much, but the change in attitude is the start of the change in behavior, and the change in behavior is the start of the change in morality. Humanity is, as best as this can be measured, better-behaved than it used to be, and more of it is taking as assumption that it must become better-behaved.
I don't know, Austin. Sure, we may be appalled by the atrocities if we are forced to acknowledge they exist, but for many people they are probably news. The horrors of Rwanda, which we just stood on the bylines for, never made it much into the western press. Far as I knew we just ignored it because it was just a bunch of black people and there was no oil there; I wasn't aware that it was because we'd basically gone in, made a mess of Somalia a few years before and decided that the deaths of 18 solders as a result of our imperialist blundering meant that it was time to just let the "savages" kill each other and turn isolationist again
( ... )
You know, I just reread this and realized it makes no sense on it's own, so basically this is me coming out of the following material:
"Triage" - Documentary of a man returning to areas he worked as a humanitarian aid worker during the worst parts of the famine in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda
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It's often quipped that the logical result of studying humanity is misanthropy, and ... well, it's one of those things that has maybe too much bite to it.
I don't know any easy way to make things better, but maybe this will help: there are more people offended by the atrocities you name today than there were a century ago (modulo the atrocities which are new to today, compared to those of 1910). Less of this is considered normal or decent or acceptable than used to be. Simply disapproving may not seem like much, but the change in attitude is the start of the change in behavior, and the change in behavior is the start of the change in morality. Humanity is, as best as this can be measured, better-behaved than it used to be, and more of it is taking as assumption that it must become better-behaved.
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"Triage" - Documentary of a man returning to areas he worked as a humanitarian aid worker during the worst parts of the famine in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda
Savages - A book written by Randy Kane about his experiences with an Ecuadorian rainforest tribe, the Huaorani, and basically the story about how international oil corporations, the U.S. government, and the Ecuadorian government sold them up the river
Ultimately if I really didn't care about people, none of this would bother me - none of it is local issues, after all. But I do, and it does. And because I'm not a goddamn billionaire, there's not a damned thing I can do about any of it. I don't know what any of us can do about it, to be honest.
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