The problem with this post idea is that the reasons for opposing war and militarization have been run through a hundred million times in the social justice movement, and only slightly less in the mainstream public sphere. Everyone who doesn't live under a rock has heard at least a few good arguments for opposing war, especially the United States' current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, what people do with those arguments is another conversation, one I will address in future posts. But I wanted this post to be something different - something personal, emotional, and close-to-home - to distinguish it from the tons of other information out there in the anti-war movement.
Then a friend sent me a link to this TED talk by sociologist Sam Richards entitled "A radical experiment in empathy," and upon viewing it, I knew I had my second post.
This presentation almost brought tears to my eyes, but only after the dozen other emotions subsided. Richards hits the nail square on the head with this one. His speech is about empathy, a concept with which most people are familiar. But he takes it a few steps forward, walking the audience through a sensible, palatable journey of the emotional and psychological evolution of an Iraqi insurgent, laying bare the myriad reasons why they just may have developed the desire to kill Americans.
He attempts to get the audience to see American militarization through the eyes and heart of an Iraqi, comparing their experience with what Americans might go through should we be attacked and have our resources taken (in his example, China is the aggressor). He's critical of American imperialism without labeling it as such. He doesn't go on a tirade about it and he doesn't throw a bunch of numbers at us. Instead, he simply walks us through what an Iraqi may see on a daily basis - what happens right in front of them everyday of their lives and what their reaction may be.
The way I felt after watching this presentation is similar to how I felt over a year ago one night when I was living in Missouri. I had been reading through a couple of WIN magazines - the publication of the War Resisters League - and I settled in for bed full of all kinds of emotions. Then for some reason I just started having a really deep emotional response - my eyes began to tear and I felt a deep sadness. My mind started reeling with all of the horrors of war (though I had never been in a combat zone of any kind, so I guess it was just mental information acquired from other sources). I began wondering how and why we ever got to this point as a species; why are we doing this to ourselves? The questions stayed with me all night and I didn't get much sleep.
I really do feel Americans lack empathy on a deep, profound level. Many of us lack the ability to see situations from another's point of view, and we've become removed from the reality of many situations due to the inoculating effects of television, the media and political/economic rhetoric. We have become so obsessed with maintaining a certain American standard of living that we are willing to allow our leaders to do anything and everything they can to secure that standard, and we turn a blind eye towards the inevitable horrors that follow.
Empathy was the catalyst in my own process of radicalization. I started social justice work as a student advocate against violence against women. Learning about the daily horrors women face in this patriarchal, misogynistic society appalled me, and I knew I had to do something while the tools were there for me to use. I eventually began learning how to relate that aspect of the movement with the other intersecting issues of the larger movement, and the very grim picture of the current systems ridiculousness unfolded pretty quickly.
Some how, some way, we as a species have to learn to empathize with each other and the rest of the life on the planet if we are to have any chance at all of maintaining what little sanity we have left. We have to move away from the rhetoric of the established order and the media who disseminates its message, because these structures will never encourage us to feel the rest of the world's pain, because if we were to do so they wouldn't be able to control us anymore. We have to undergo this process ourselves and help each other through it, and then begin to act on the very natural tendency towards resistance that results.
Thanks for reading.
