In the
Wake of Violence
AN OPEN LETTER
By Susan Dane
As the death toll rises from the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia, most
of us don't know what to do. For some survivors, their entire town has
been washed away--their home, their families, everything they own. For
others, half a globe away, the disaster is only a newspaper article.
It is horrific, but removed.
The sheer number of lives lost paralyzes the imagination. We feel stuck
to know how to respond. A morbid fixation kicks in watching the faces
of those in agony and listening to bizarre stories of survival and loss.
150,000 killed in a few minutes, half a world away? More than twice
as many lives as etched on the Vietnam Memorial and that took a concerted
10-year effort to kill? What are we supposed to do with this information?
Join the Red Cross?
Joining the Red Cross--or any of the numerous organizations now dealing
with this disaster--might be exactly what we should do. But whether
we become active in the relief effort and to what degree, there is something
equally pressing we each need to do. There is something to be seen in
the wake of this disaster, something obvious that, if heeded, will bridge
the miles and bring the loss closer to home, which is precisely where
it belongs.
The single most obvious fact that a world disaster pulls into focus
is an amazing one: It is the fact that we are actually one people.
We breathe one air, we stand on one ground, we are joined by one sea.
We are not merely connected. "Connected" implies separate
but joined. We are much more. We are literally one. The miles and continents
that define our borders are instantly bridged when the heart is touched
by another's pain and suffering. When we see another's need, suddenly
our own need to give becomes equally urgent. And give we do.
The single most obvious
fact that a world disaster pulls into focus is an amazing one: It
is the fact that we are actually one people.
|
But before we flatter ourselves with our charity, let's be honest and
see what is actually happening.
Where does all the money come from--both in terms of government relief
funds and personal donations? Apparently, the money was there to be
given before a global disaster forced our hand, no? We didn’t just suddenly
manufacture a few extra hundred million dollars, euros, yen etc., right?
Why does a sudden and dramatic calamity arouse a passionate response
when the persistent, chronic desperation of most of our planet’s people
remains incidental to our lives?
Disasters bring to the forefront a type of unity that the self-centeredness
of our average day leaves no room for. And yet the very air we breathe
and ground we stand on are putting this fact before our eyes every minute.
By nature, the earth calls us to unity. By nature, the earth begs us
to listen. Global cooperation is not some sort of poetic or social ideal.
It is not about political agendas, left or right. Global cooperation
is the mandate of existence. We will either obey it or fail.
The reality of global unity was decided long before the shifting lines
we call nations were drawn, and long before the governments now manipulating
those lines found their power. Unity is woven into every thread of earth's
delicate fabric: Air, Land, and Sea: This is the three-branch government
to which we are all first subject. And which we should all gladly serve.
For without these three fundamentals which underlie everything else,
any discussion of political priorities or human rights is moot.
The reality of things is that what makes us one is something that differing
ideologies can never sever--something much more basic and inescapable
than ideologies, namely--Life itself. The wind. The air. The land. The
sea. There is only one of each to go around. And go around they do.
They are not accessories to us. They are life. There is as clearly one
Life, as there is one sea, and one air being breathed by all.
| You are breathing the same air the
survivors in Southeast Asia are breathing--literally. |
Watch the next breath you take. Where do you take it from except the
common pool? Just try to find the line between “your” breath and the
breath of the person next to you. You are breathing the same air the
survivors in Southeast Asia are breathing--literally. You are breathing
the same air that the children in Iraq are breathing--literally. You
are breathing the same air that Islamist fundamentalists are breathing--literally.
And they are breathing "yours." Muslim and Christan, Arab
and Jew--each calling the other "the terrorist." Where does
“our” breath stop and “their” breath start? We drink from the same pool.
There is one Life.
Ideologies cannot divide us. Even conflicting ideologies that lead us
to war do not actually divide us. In fact, contrary to popular opinion,
war does not separate. It actually unites. Black, White, Arab, Jew,
Christian, Asian, Muslim, and people of Color, -- war unites us all
in one grand brotherhood and unified cause—namely, the cause of self-destruction.
Given our enthusiasm for self-destruction, it is almost curious that
the news of this tsunami sweeps us up in a tide of concern. Why don’t
we rise up in an equally unified response to a dictator's genocide in
Africa, for example? Or our own country’s attack on Iraq? What is the
difference? The speed of this attack? The unexpectedness? The fact that
we didn’t plan it? Certainly, the end result is not much different?
As horrific as this tidal wave is, it is nothing compared to the horrendous
tsunamis we engineer and then commit against each other with so much
single-minded dedication. The human species organizes its economy around
the manufacturing of war. It always has. And it creates a hypothetical
division where none exists in order to perpetuate the self-interests
of division. This is the genius of insanity.
Ironically, like war, this tsunami unifies us. As with the attack on
the World Trade Center in 2001, the death roster in Southeast Asia reads
like a roll call at the United Nations: Indonesia, Thailand, India,
Burma, the Maldive islands, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Europe, Scandinavia,
the United States. The countries of the victims are still being sorted.
But any notion that this disaster did not happen in "our"
country is a misnomer, because any disaster on any continent is a global
disaster.
We may think that miles create distance, but the real distance lies
only in the words "me" and "mine." Only "me"
and "mine" can make another person's disaster less real, less
urgent, than our own. If we are honest, we will admit, that unless someone
we know was killed in this tidal wave, we do not feel the immediate
visceral chaos we felt on September 11th, 2001, when disaster struck
closer to home.
| When our own personal life is touched
by a catastrophe that occurs "miles" away, the so-called
distance is dissolved in a heart-beat. |
When our own personal life is touched by a catastrophe that occurs
"miles" away, the so-called distance is dissolved in a heart-beat.
The war fought on foreign soil simply does not hurt as much because
it is not "my" land that is being bombed. It is not my local
church, my local hospital, my child's day-care center. And until it
is my child or sister or brother killed, it is not really my war.
But for those whose lives are touched directly by these violences--the
tsunami in Southeast Asia, and the decades-long suicidal conflict in
the Middle East--these people know that nothing is happening "far
away." Suicide bombings are the weapons of those who cannot manufacture
metal. But all fratricidal conflict is a type of suicide.
So why does the news of this tsunami sweep us up in an urgency to take
action and bring relief that the tsunami in the Middle East does not?
The answer is simple. Ironically--when up against a common enemy--in
this case "nature"-- we rally in defense and rise up in uncommon
unity.
But what can we do when we are up against ourselves? Who do we fight
then?
Politics is a misnomer. In the end, there are only actions that preserve
and actions that destroy. So long as we continue to imagine that we
are many peoples, and that industry, economy and profit must be built
around defending "our" people from "those other"
people, we are ignoring what geology itself is stating to the contrary,
and what the air we breathe should be reminding us with every inhalation.
| Global disasters are
not half the enemy we imagine them to be. They call us to consciousness
and arouse our commitment to a common humanity. |
There is no actual line between us and them. There is a unity that
miles cannot sever, that even our love of "me" and "mine"
cannot break. It is in the air we breathe. The water we drink. Radiation
and radioactivity, carried by our winds and our seas, are a great unifier.
So is love and the desire to heal. We should let our world teach us.
It is speaking all the time.
In Southern France, where I live, if the winds blow from the South,
the cars all get covered with a fine, powdered sand. We call it a "Sahara."
When they blow from the North, we get covered with a fine powdered snow
from the Alps. Last year, I brushed the sand off my car on a Tuesday
and the snow off my car on a Thursday. It brought home with a vivid
immediacy how close are these seemingly separate worlds. Suddenly such
disparate societies as Algeria and Switzerland seemed only a wind's
breath away--because they are. I stood between them a long time, thinking.
What is the solution to violence?
The answer is simple: the words "my" and "our" must
be ruled archaic.
Global disasters are not half the enemy we imagine them to be. They
call us to consciousness and arouse our commitment to a common humanity.
The real disaster is that we seem to only remember this when nature
reminds us. 150,000 people died in this tsunami. An estimated million
people or more are homeless and in desperate need. These are horrific
numbers. But they are numbers we live with every day with no serious
concern at all. We simply do not care, or care enough. If we did, we
would not simply increase our charitable giving. Charity alone is not
the answer. We would change the basis of our economy--from me to us,
from mine to our.
If we would let this tsunami--in all its horrific violence--rent the
veil from our eyes, ironically, we would see our own blindness. These
150,000 tragic deaths would redirect the course of history by reminding
us that unity is the only sane choice. Sadly, this will not happen.
However, as I write this, there is a second tidal wave rising--this
one of relief. Thousands of people are orchestrating an outpouring of
compassion and generosity. This too is an ocean of sorts. Its tide carries
the sanity of preserving life, while on the other side of the world
we are carrying out the insanity of taking life. We should let the juxtaposition
of these two waves call us into question. And we should let that question
become a questioning.
As always, money talks. The budgets we create for each cause reveal
our priorities and how we see the world.
"What are we supposed to do?"
We should let this tsunami speak its peace. If we will go to its depths,
we will hear beneath its roar, a plea for unity. This is an individual
journey. It needs no political rallies. It demands only self-examination.
The money is always there. As is the world's desperation. The question
we need to keep asking is: Where are we?
Susan Dane
Nice, France
January 3, 2005
Please feel free to share this letter with others, giving proper authorship
credit and website reference: www.susandane.com
