The rainy blog: There are good people in this world
Love is rain
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
There are good people in this world

If we were to believe Hobbes, we might put the struggles we see around us in a rather bleak, but expected context, and with a shrug, dismiss them as symptomatic of the warlike state of affairs that is natural to us. We would think that fighting, torture, terror and greed are all essential facets of human nature. We might, as Hobbes did, long for that authoritarian monarch who would ensure peace by controlling every aspect of our lives, restricting our movements, choosing our destinies. So long as it ensured peace.

But then, turning to Foucault, we would see that history is nothing but a series of shifting violent paradigms, and that no matter who rules, there are groups of people who are intimidated, oppressed, killed... and for what? Not conforming to the majority, being deviant. Women were medicated for not wanting to bake cakes and do the dishes not so long ago. Valium was the word of the day. Not that it's gotten any better. In the western world, there's a way to 'medicalise' just about any 'deviant' behaviour. Feeling sad is not a valid response to the violent world around us. Instead, we must pop pills and continue producing money to buy assets, and further institutionalise the existent power structures.

So what is this elusive 'peace' that many of us hunger for somewhere in the back of our minds? How can it be achieved? Do we mean an end to violence? What kind of violence? Do we pretend that somehow, nothing ever happened to the oppressed or killed, and simply begin to live justly? Or are we accountable to those that have suffered? And to what extent?

Chaiwat Satha-Anand, a writer filled with hope - a far cry from either Foucault or Hobbes - reminds us a more just reality lies in the hands of individuals. We are not powerless to break chains of violence.

Terror has three main factors to it:


The concept can also be applied to psychological violence. Traumatized childhoods often breed traumatizing parents.

It is a very bleak cycle, and any person would be tempted to give up and say "well, that's just how things are!" There is something very comforting about that thought. Perhaps then I can concentrate on doing more "fun" things, like watching TV, clubbing, drugs - anything to make me forget that there are people suffering in the world - and thus reaffirm the whisper in the breeze that says "it's ok to forget; it's bliss to disconnect".

But no! Satha-Anand gives examples of individuals, such as Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish man who acted on his own courage to save a community of 700,000 Jews in Hungary. But more importantly, he reminds us of people within those violent circumstances who insisted on using their own moral judgement, sometimes at the cost of their own life. There were SS officers who helped Jews escape - there was Oscar Schindler, who, even as a rich and influential member of the Nazi party, risked his life and lost his fortune to save the lives of the 'enemy of the state'. There was a Sikh man who crossed the border into Pakistan to help save a Muslim girl he barely knew, who had been taken away by Pakistani officials. All this in a background where the man was the son of a Sikh man who had been killed by Muslims, and the girl, the only remaining survivor of her entire family that had been killed by Sikhs.

So, it's not "just the way it is". The question is whether you think it's more important to 'stay alive' or to 'stay human'.

Foucault, M. (1975), Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison

Hobbes, T. (1651), Leviathan

Satha-Anand, C. (2001), 'Crossing the Enemy's Line: Helping Others in Violent Situations Throught Non-Violent Action', Peace Research vol. 33 iss. 2 pp105-114

Satha-Anand, C. (2002) ‘Understanding the success of terrorism’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp 157-159

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