5 ms·

Psychic numbing and genocide (2007)

45 points by areoform 6y ago

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> Darfur can be seen as but the latest of a long string of genocides dating back to 1915. Power notes that in every instance America and the rest of the world looked away. Darfur is mostly ignored by Americans for the same reason that the overwhelming majority of charity donations are given to local organizations and not global ones. Your efforts to help local causes can be seen by you, and sometimes very quickly (e.g. soup kitchens). Not so for catastrophes that are thousands of miles away both physically and culturally.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
I don’t understand the article’s use of the word “reserve” in its opening sentence. The APA is a reputable source, so it is strange to see something so jarringly incorrect in an opening sentence. It makes me think I am missing something. Am I?
- routerl 6y ago
  I'm completely with you on that one, but trying to give the benefit of the doubt: there is a meaning of "reserve" that is very close to "preserve", which does make sense in that sentence, although it is pretty unusual wording.
jaspax 6y ago
In addition to the good points that others have brought up, another good question is what, exactly, we're supposed to do about this. This article seems to assume an infinitely capable US military that can walk in, police the situation, and later leave without making things worse than they are. The history of "humanitarian" interventions leaves me quite doubting that this would be the case. To take an even more stark example, consider the ongoing situation with the Uyghurs in western China. At this point, most people are aware of the situation, but what action could the US undertake to save the Uyghurs? Invade China?
- sneak 6y ago
  The US military is widely misunderstood to be a force for good, as they spend a lot of tax money on various initiatives, some overt (such as paying the NFL and others to purchase time to perform military displays before events) and some way more subtle (such as demanding final script review of Hollywood films in which DoD resources are used), to promote that view. Ultimately, the US military serves as an organization that uses violence to promote the interests of the people who control the US military (as a distinct set from the US people, who are fairly uniformly and consistently against any type of military violence). Sometimes the results of that can be termed "good". Usually, they can't. When the branding and the outcome line up, it's a happy accident. The US will invade wherever there is profit for those who control the military and associated businesses. If such can be spun toward a humanitarian end, all the better.
  - sabellito 6y ago
    Indeed, and the propaganda is so effective that even some liberal (for whatever definition of the word), informed people sometimes believe in it. The list is so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
    - approxim8ion 6y ago
      Adding to the list: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
- wonnage 6y ago
  It's absurd that the past century of American foreign policy has conditioned us to associate humanitarian intervention with military aid. I also think that realistically there's very little we can do. The main non-military option is economic sanctions. That just ensures that the people being killed can starve to death first. Perhaps that leads to a revolution, but that seems like kind of a cruel way to go about things.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Power notes that in every instance America and the rest of the world looked away. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." When America does go in, the world accuses it of interfering and makes ugly jokes about "Be nice to America or they will bring democracy to you too" (or similar). But the repetitiveness of such atrocities, ignored by powerful people and nations, and by the general public, calls for explanations that may reflect some fundamental deficiency in our humanity-a deficiency that, once identified, might possibly be overcome. Wow. Way to go to alienate anyone and everyone on the planet. It's a complex situation. The way you solve complex situations is by doing your best to find non-blamey framings that focus on answers, not on finger pointing. The numbers fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. Riiiight. Feeeelings. This is the be all and end all of why people do things. (In case it needs to be said: This bit is sarcasm.) I can't tell you how often I was screwed over and pissed off about it while homeless because someone had feelings and wanted to pretend to be a good person and had no idea how to effectively help me but they were dedicated to screwing blindly with my life anyway. Perhaps the most basic form of feeling is affect, the sense (not necessarily conscious) that something is good or bad. Affect is a quick-and-dirty decision-making metric that is ill-suited to use in large, complex and nuanced situations that will take years to resolve, at best. You know, like genocides. One last important psychological element in this story is attention. Just as feelings are necessary for motivating helping, attention is necessary for feelings. More nonsense. Here is reality: I know nothing about Darfur. This is possibly the first I have heard of ongoing genocide there. There are plenty of big problems on my very doorstep that require attention without me looking to screw with the lives of strangers on the other side of the planet whose culture, history, etc etc I know nothing about and am, thus, not qualified to do much to meaningfully help. I spent years homeless. I have had a college class on homelessness. I have spent decades trying to figure out how America, where I live, can do something meaningful about widespread homelessness. Homeless people tend to die on average about two decades earlier than housed people. Lack of housing kills people. It is a form of polite genocide happening on my very doorstep. There is also a long history of race-based genocide in the US. Blacks are descended from slaves and Native Americans had their land mostly stolen from them and I don't know how to find some way to provide justice on those issues in my very country. We Americans don't have it all solved right here at home. Acting like it is somehow our fault that other people are screwing up their own country even more blatantly is all kinds of weird and crazy nonsense. You know what really drives a lot of people, American or otherwise, to "help" people who are poorer than them etc? The idea that those folks have problems that are easy to solve, unlike ours. Our problems are hard to solve. There are no easy answers, so I'm going to pretend I'm a good person and go randomly fuck with the lives of people who are "less fortunate" and don't confuse me with the facts. Diet for a Small Planet documents the fact that most countries can feed their own. If they aren't, it's because of things like civil war, political BS and outside interference. When America goes and tries to feed starving people in foreign countries, we commonly export our own lousy beef-and-wheat based diet and get people hooked on foods they cannot afford to buy that actively cause health issues. Fordlandia is just one of many experiments where some American thought they could go in and provide some top down superior solution, ignored local wisdom and knowledge entirely and it failed horrifically. There have been many other examples like that.

45 points by areoform 6y ago

> Darfur can be seen as but the latest of a long string of genocides dating back to 1915. Power notes that in every instance America and the rest of the world looked away. Darfur is mostly ignored by Americans for the same reason that the overwhelming majority of charity donations are given to local organizations and not global ones. Your efforts to help local causes can be seen by you, and sometimes very quickly (e.g. soup kitchens). Not so for catastrophes that are thousands of miles away both physically and culturally.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

I don’t understand the article’s use of the word “reserve” in its opening sentence. The APA is a reputable source, so it is strange to see something so jarringly incorrect in an opening sentence. It makes me think I am missing something. Am I?

routerl 6y ago
I'm completely with you on that one, but trying to give the benefit of the doubt: there is a meaning of "reserve" that is very close to "preserve", which does make sense in that sentence, although it is pretty unusual wording.

jaspax 6y ago

In addition to the good points that others have brought up, another good question is what, exactly, we're supposed to do about this. This article seems to assume an infinitely capable US military that can walk in, police the situation, and later leave without making things worse than they are. The history of "humanitarian" interventions leaves me quite doubting that this would be the case. To take an even more stark example, consider the ongoing situation with the Uyghurs in western China. At this point, most people are aware of the situation, but what action could the US undertake to save the Uyghurs? Invade China?

sneak 6y ago
The US military is widely misunderstood to be a force for good, as they spend a lot of tax money on various initiatives, some overt (such as paying the NFL and others to purchase time to perform military displays before events) and some way more subtle (such as demanding final script review of Hollywood films in which DoD resources are used), to promote that view. Ultimately, the US military serves as an organization that uses violence to promote the interests of the people who control the US military (as a distinct set from the US people, who are fairly uniformly and consistently against any type of military violence). Sometimes the results of that can be termed "good". Usually, they can't. When the branding and the outcome line up, it's a happy accident. The US will invade wherever there is profit for those who control the military and associated businesses. If such can be spun toward a humanitarian end, all the better.
- sabellito 6y ago
  Indeed, and the propaganda is so effective that even some liberal (for whatever definition of the word), informed people sometimes believe in it. The list is so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
  - approxim8ion 6y ago
    Adding to the list: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
wonnage 6y ago
It's absurd that the past century of American foreign policy has conditioned us to associate humanitarian intervention with military aid. I also think that realistically there's very little we can do. The main non-military option is economic sanctions. That just ensures that the people being killed can starve to death first. Perhaps that leads to a revolution, but that seems like kind of a cruel way to go about things.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Power notes that in every instance America and the rest of the world looked away. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." When America does go in, the world accuses it of interfering and makes ugly jokes about "Be nice to America or they will bring democracy to you too" (or similar). But the repetitiveness of such atrocities, ignored by powerful people and nations, and by the general public, calls for explanations that may reflect some fundamental deficiency in our humanity-a deficiency that, once identified, might possibly be overcome. Wow. Way to go to alienate anyone and everyone on the planet. It's a complex situation. The way you solve complex situations is by doing your best to find non-blamey framings that focus on answers, not on finger pointing. The numbers fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. Riiiight. Feeeelings. This is the be all and end all of why people do things. (In case it needs to be said: This bit is sarcasm.) I can't tell you how often I was screwed over and pissed off about it while homeless because someone had feelings and wanted to pretend to be a good person and had no idea how to effectively help me but they were dedicated to screwing blindly with my life anyway. Perhaps the most basic form of feeling is affect, the sense (not necessarily conscious) that something is good or bad. Affect is a quick-and-dirty decision-making metric that is ill-suited to use in large, complex and nuanced situations that will take years to resolve, at best. You know, like genocides. One last important psychological element in this story is attention. Just as feelings are necessary for motivating helping, attention is necessary for feelings. More nonsense. Here is reality: I know nothing about Darfur. This is possibly the first I have heard of ongoing genocide there. There are plenty of big problems on my very doorstep that require attention without me looking to screw with the lives of strangers on the other side of the planet whose culture, history, etc etc I know nothing about and am, thus, not qualified to do much to meaningfully help. I spent years homeless. I have had a college class on homelessness. I have spent decades trying to figure out how America, where I live, can do something meaningful about widespread homelessness. Homeless people tend to die on average about two decades earlier than housed people. Lack of housing kills people. It is a form of polite genocide happening on my very doorstep. There is also a long history of race-based genocide in the US. Blacks are descended from slaves and Native Americans had their land mostly stolen from them and I don't know how to find some way to provide justice on those issues in my very country. We Americans don't have it all solved right here at home. Acting like it is somehow our fault that other people are screwing up their own country even more blatantly is all kinds of weird and crazy nonsense. You know what really drives a lot of people, American or otherwise, to "help" people who are poorer than them etc? The idea that those folks have problems that are easy to solve, unlike ours. Our problems are hard to solve. There are no easy answers, so I'm going to pretend I'm a good person and go randomly fuck with the lives of people who are "less fortunate" and don't confuse me with the facts. Diet for a Small Planet documents the fact that most countries can feed their own. If they aren't, it's because of things like civil war, political BS and outside interference. When America goes and tries to feed starving people in foreign countries, we commonly export our own lousy beef-and-wheat based diet and get people hooked on foods they cannot afford to buy that actively cause health issues. Fordlandia is just one of many experiments where some American thought they could go in and provide some top down superior solution, ignored local wisdom and knowledge entirely and it failed horrifically. There have been many other examples like that.