Post 80

Maybe I'm a bad person....

I gotta tell you, I don't understand myself; I really don't. Feel free to comment on this post with any theories as to why I am the way I am 'cuz I'm not gettin' it.

Today I got to see Paul Rusesabagina speak to a forum at my school (he's the Hotel Rwanda guy, if that helps). It was his story in his own words, and I suppose it was very nice, but I felt sort of disconnected from the whole thing; I failed to see any relevance to me in my life.

I have previously mentioned one of my favorite teachers Mr. Richards. I loved that man--he taught me a lot--but one thing he did never really made sense to me. On several occasions, he would talk about how the future was in our hands, and that we in the rising generation had the responsibility to prepare ourselves to try to fix this screwed up world. Sometimes a student would respond by asking how we could possibly fix the world, and Mr. Richards's response was always the same: he would make an appeal to Gandhi. Holding a hand at about 5', he would say something like, "Remember, a man who was only this tall single-handedly toppled the British empire."

This always puzzled me. Even putting aside any quibbling over the truthiness of the statement, I'm just not sure I see the relevance. Was he suggesting that if I stop eating and take a hike to the nearest beach, global warming will reverse itself (read: Al Gore will die a horrible death), social security will revive (read: Ron Paul will die a horrible death), and people will stop stabbing each other with forks (read: Flight of the Conchords will die a horrible death)? I don't follow your logic, sir.

So, I'm sitting there listening to Mr. Rusesabagina (to get back to the original topic), and he's telling a story that--well, it certainly deserved to be turned into the movie; I'd actually kinda like to see that movie some day. He's an amazing man (despite that his autobiography is called An Ordinary Man), and I respect the things he did. But he wrapped up his speech in such a way that he basically turned his experience into the sort of thing we ought to emulate.

Okay, Paul, so next time I find myself in a political upheaval and just happen to have a hotel and a list of phone numbers for all my buddies in the local military and DC and the UN, I'll be sure to do all I can to save as many lives as possible.

It's hard for me to see the relevance, and frankly, it's hard for me to care.

This is the part of me that I don't understand. In my American Heritage class one day, we were talking about how times of anarchy tend to lead to the rise of a tyrannical dictator because people get so afraid of the chaos that they'll follow anyone who can maintain order, but tyranny tends to lead right back to anarchy because people get so tired of the oppression that they revolt. To demonstrate what anarchy and tyranny are like, my professor showed us two short videos: the first was a collection of news clips from the Rodney King riots, the looting in Louisiana after Katrina hit, and various other anarchical events in our recent past; the second was an excerpt from a documentary about Saddam Hussein's regime, and it showed all kinds of horrible atrocities. While the first clip nearly made me weep (the sight of people being so terrible to each other made me very emotional), the second clip didn't affect me at all (torture and mass graves disturbed me so little that I questioned my own humanity). I found that very interesting.

In a similar vein (I assume, at least), I have a heckuva lot more admiration for people like the "subway superman" than I do for people like Paul Rusesabagina. That subway story--man, I wanna be like that guy.

I may never save a life--I may never get the opportunity to even try. I hope that if such an opportunity comes, I'll do my best to be heroic, but I don't aspire to any such thing; I'll just do my best to be a genuinely decent human being--that's enough for me.