I’ve been well aware of the whole mess in Darfur for approximately a couple years now. In fact, I’m quite well aware of many messes occurring throughout the world. Indeed, these problems are serious and ‘something should be done.’ But the answer to the question of who should do that something seems to be a dubious one right now. And moreover, these messes are really symptoms of underlying problems within some people’s psyches.
Tonight I watched a movie about Darfur which I felt was terribly heartbreaking, yet in a moral or functional sense, pointless. I felt that it made a simultaneous call of duty and ego stroking for those activists who want to clean up everyone else’s messes before they focus on their own. I would say one point which bothered me was that of urging people to go out and write letters to their state representatives to fix Darfur, when our own country needs such fixing! Our country has such serious problems (which I need not delve into), that we really aren’t in the position to tell other what to do.
Some people would look at America and say that it's broken, taken into consideration on its own merit. Others would look at Darfur and compare it to America, saying we are so much the better off, so we should do something to 'help' them (and just about everyone else who needs our 'help,' once we get around to it). It is probably no surprise, but I fall into the former group.
What strikes me is that many people would rather go all the way to the other side of the world and fix “their” problems “over there” before putting ours into order “over here.” I used to be the kind of person who had lots of work to do on fixing my own problems. But I saw and wanted to fix everyone else’s, somehow managing to escape acknowledging the existence of and consequent necessity for healing my own. It was only after I worked through the bulk of my own ‘self-issues’ that I began to see how much my wanting to fix everyone else’s life reflected the desire to fix my own.
And so it is with those activists and countries who want to fix every other country’s problems before they fix their own. Please don’t get me wrong: yes Darfur needs fixing, but it doesn’t need it from an already broken country. The sick man is not in the position to heal. Or in other words, if we don’t stop trying to fix everyone else’s country, then eventually people from other countries will be arriving in America to fix us!
When you see something wrong happening ‘over there-‘be it with your family, friends, neighbors, you can only be of assistance if you are willing and welcomed to do so. But if you are not in the position to help- no matter how much you ant to- then you really cannot.
The fact is, when the leaders of a country are crooked and corrupt; when the people are mislead; when the country is in a 7 trillion dollar debt; when the military is overstretched as it is; when their power is dwindling; and when the international community thinks that country should learn to mind its business, then perhaps that particular country in question should sit back and consider how it got to be so broken and howit can be fixed, before they answer their own call of duty and march off to fix the other guy’s problems over there.
And one more point: I don’t see anyone else charging out to fix the world but America. It’s really a noble goal, but it isn’t attainable in our current state. It’s not our responsibility to fix everyone else’s problems- why doesn’t, for example, France do something to fix Darfur or whomever? Well, for one thing it’s not France’s job, and for another, they are spending their respires at home to fix their own problems, as they really don’t want to exhaust themselves only to wind up in a ‘fix France’ campaign.
So I’ll end it here by stating that I don’t believe broke accountants should offer financial advice. While it’s a noble desire to fix other people’s problems, doing so only becomes viable once he who offers has fixed his own. What we need to do is first fix what’s wrong with us ourselves, and only then can we begin to fix our relationships with others and improve our lives. At that state, it becomes viable to get involved with fixing our own countries problems. But I can say that for a bunch of people who haven’t solved their own psychological problems to go out ‘fixing’ the problems of others is a recipe for disaster.
Finally, the reason ‘it always happens again’ is because there are underlying problems in the world, the symptoms of which are ‘it,’ or genocide, war rimes, and crimes against humanity. The solutions to that symptom lie in treating the cause- ourselves. That’s right, us. For example, when we believe it’s OK to commit evil acts for “just causes;” or we let our leaders get away with lying, cheating, and stealing; or when we believe that such a world system in which 17% of the world’s people live in 1$ a day is OK- then we can be certain we have our own problems to deal with as individuals and families.
The world in which most people are psychologically healthy individuals is the world which functions correctly. It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but the solutions lie not in whether we have might, but rather whether we have right.
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