I'm not a big sports fan (my idea of "sports" is a game of chess). I'd rather watch a half-decent movie than go to a club. I have a near-rectangular butt from sitting in front my computer screen for the better half of my adult life.
To reiterate, I'm a lazy person.
But if there was just one thing that had the potential to kick me into action any day of the year, it would be defending other people's rights.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not an activist by any means, no matter how stretchy your definition of activism may be. The most I usually do is talk -- although, on second thought, so do most activists!
But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that sitting down in my comfortable chair -- contemplating the intricacies of Whitehead's philosophy or marveling at the almost magical findings of quantum physics -- while other, less fortunate people are being oppressed, smothered, manipulated, brainwashed, screwed, used and abused... I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this needs to quickly get off the menu.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that philosophy, science aren't spirituality aren't important. I don't think I would find life worth living to boot without those things.
And I'm not even promoting a philanthropic sentimentality. Au contraire. In fact, what I'm talking about here is how defending other people's rights can inseparably have a self-serving agenda. Let me explain...
In the past, life had a much slower pace. It took a significant amount of time, sometimes up to several life-spans, for any status quo to shift course. Those who were born with spoons of any kind of precious metals in their mouths didn't need to worry much about losing their inherited privileges and good fortune. Change required decades, often centuries, to take place, and it was usually quite predictable.
In other words, unless you really wanted to support a particular humanistic cause or something so la-di-dah, you could simply live your entire life without a care in the world, totally content with whatever social status, race, skin color, geographical location, or financial situation you were born or had grown into.
Now, fast forward to the 21st century. Fantastic technologies are brought out every day, and they become effectively obsolete in less than a year. Communication systems have turned the entire globe into a backyard. The war machine has become so sophisticated that we don't even need to have actual face-to-face confrontation anymore. Just grab your joystick, push the red button and BAM...
... Bye-bye, Afghanistan.[/b] You will be sorely missed!
Of course, we still engage in actual face-to-face warfare. The reasons for this vary enormously, but you could find a decent introduction to one such reason in George Orwell's 1984.
Where am I going with all this? Good question...
Evelyn Beatrice Hall once said, as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Now that's definitely a noble and gracious thing to believe, do, or even just say. But I'm thinking there could be more to this than just being a Good Samaritan.
First of all, sticking up for other people increases your chances of finding someone who will stand up for you when you need it. It motivates and it sets an example.
But more importantly, if enough people adopt this attitude, it invariably leads to win-win situations. Paranoia diminishes. Cataclysmic clashes disappear. Overall productivity skyrockets.
And best thing is, the need vanishes for a single Messiah who must sacrifice his/her life to save ours. Instead, everyone needs to exert only minimal effort in order to effect monumental change. I hope you'll pardon my uncouth metaphor, but if every living person on the planet gathered in one spot and "spit," odds are an entire city will drown in saliva!
But here's the real clincher, the true crux and raison d'être of this rant...
We live in turbulent times. Selfishness and greed, exacerbated by shortsighted vision and arrogance, now have enough resources to do whatever it is that pleases their black little hearts. And it's the sad fact that greed seems to have always been infinitely more active in pursuing its agenda than goodwill and peace of mind ever were.
"Business as usual" cannot be on the menu anymore. Anything that anyone does anywhere around the world has an effect on you, and it's usually much more direct than you realize.
All this is good and dandy. But, usually, it's fairly easy to defend other people's rights if they represent something that you personally cherish or believe. For instance, it's only natural to condemn the war on Iraq if you're an Arab, or to promote "green living" if you're an environmentalist.
But say you're a Muslim -- could you endorse another person's right to choose his/her religiosity, or to abandon religion holus-bolus? If you're a rational scientist, could you be tolerant of somebody else's spirituality and unprovable metaphysical beliefs?
Can you actually find it in yourself to defend a harmless idea that another person believes in, even if you don't buy it yourself?
If you're smart enough, well, you must!
Remember Bob Dylan's album, The Times They Are a-Changin'?
Well, this is it, folks. These times are a-changin'!
The international political climate is witnessing a major shift in its dynamics. Economies rise and fall in a flash. Wars erupt out of the blue for next to no reason. People go mad. Governments go mad. Nature goes mad.
You can never know when you will be in a position where you need other people's support -- people who don't necessarily believe in you what you do. But make no mistake, my friend, such a time will come... if you don't make the first move.
Selfishness used to be harmful only to the other guy. Today, however, it has turned around begun beating the Self over the head with a titanic hammer. We live in an era that is brimming with paradoxes, but it's particularly amusing to see that altruism and self-sacrifice may have actually become the only ways for selfishness to survive.
The things that got me thinking about all this was a poem I read in God Wants You Dead (a huge "thank you" to my friend Omar Khalifa for telling me about this amazing book). Read it, re-read it, and then read it again. I can't recommend this book enough!
OK, that was plenty of yapping for me. I'm sure I told you nothing you didn't know already, so I'll leave you with the poem. Perhaps it will have an emotional and intellectual impact on you as strongly as it did on me...
QUOTE
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
By the time they came for me, there was no one left to speak up.
-- Poem based on speeches by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
By the time they came for me, there was no one left to speak up.
-- Poem based on speeches by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
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