I've really tried hard to keep this wonderful website up as my school load increases, but this spring semester has proven just about my limit. Classes are interesting of course, but the reading, writing, analyzing, group projects, problem sets, etc. are taxing, tiring, and altogether time-consuming. I barely have a minute in the morning to scan the NY Times headlines, much less comb dozens of newspapers and journals for unique perspectives from around the world. I'm writing this note to you of course, but it's really just as much for me. You see, I love this site, truly believe in its goal and message. But I figure it's better to do a whole-hearted job than one that's half-asleep. I also realized that I was being a bit of a hypocrite. You see, while I encourage and try to practice empathy, I realized I was being the reverse of empathetic to at least one person: myself. By allowing this website a brief hiatus, I am recognizing my humanity (I have limits too!), while allowing myself to concentrate on the business of graduation - with a mind, always, toward what alias eliot has taught me about the world and each person's place in it.

I hope that some people will continue to visit periodically. Maybe to scan back blog entries, or to read in-depth some of the parts of the Guide currently posted. I'm still going to finish the Guide, come hell or what have you. There are three chapters left, and I've got the bulk, they just need about two weeks of tender loving care (translation: edits, augments, html-headaches, etc). Also, I'm still thinking about how this website can evolve, focusing equally on the active part of active empathy. As always, I am eager for your comments, suggestions, critiques. Although Found Bytes will be temporarily discontinued, I'm still here, so you can contact me at any time.

Well, that leaves me the hardest task - saying goodbye to a project that's shaped and motivated my thoughts for many months. Fortunately, it's a brief parting, 'cause I know this semester will whip by and summer will arrive and I'll be full to bursting with new ideas just scrambling for a chance to be blogged and byted into action.

Take care everyone, and don't forget to check up on us every once in a while. Who knows? The teachers might all go on strike in mid-March and then I'll have ample time to alias eliot away!

Cheers,

Andreana 

Captain Beatty might be the antagonist in Fahrenheit 451, but he's one of complexity, dire intellect, and disillusionment. In fact, I think that disillusionment is one of the most dangerous personality traits because, if not tempered by a deeper, more resounding hope, it can lead to utter contempt for life. That's what seems to have happened to Beatty. What's so amazing about him is that he's no stupe. He's not some dull, thick-necked bureaucratic stooge who takes his order from high up and doles out tasks to lower-level minions. He knows what's happening, knows the causes, the effects, the whole historic sweep. His lecture to Montag on the origins of the "Firemen" (those, in Bradbury's dystopia, who light fires and burn books) is one of the greatest condensations of modern intellectual trends to be found in literature. It is a warning but also a gift. Bradbury realized that if he uncovered the decline and where it leads, perhaps 1 in 100,000 of his readers would gasp, look up, and commit themselves to changing the trend and becoming, in more ways than one, a "living book".

You'll notice in the excerpt below several instances of ellipses. I did not cut out any of Beatty's speech, but rather some of the narrative elements (Montag's thoughts, Mrs. Montag's interruptions, etc.) that work in the story but detract from the power and flow of ideas. I simply wanted to put Beatty's words all together so that readers could get the gut-punch I think Bradbury intended.

Excerpt, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, pp. 53-62

"Beatty puffed his pipe. ‘Every fireman, sooner or later, hits this. They only need understanding, to know how the wheels run. Need to know the history of our profession. They don’t feed it to rookies like they used to. Damn shame.’ Puff. ‘Only fire chiefs remember it now.’ Puff. ‘I’ll let you in on it….When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I’d say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then – motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass. And because they had mass, they became simpler,’ Beatty said. ‘Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of pastepuddling norm, do you follow me?...’

"Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. ‘Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending…Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Our of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s you intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more….’

"'Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in midair, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary time-wasting thought!....’

"'School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?...’

"'The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour….’

"'Empty the theaters save for clowns and furnish the rooms with glass walls and pretty colors running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sauterne. You like baseball, don’t you, Montag?...’

"'More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before….’

"'Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon and Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger the market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic book survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.’

"'Yes, but what about the firemen, then?’ asked Montag.

"'Ah,’ Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. ‘What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word “intellectual,” of course, became the swear work it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally “bright,” did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me….’

"'You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these things….’

"'Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he’s on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerator serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man’s a speck of black dust. Let’s not quibble over individuals with memoriums. Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean….’

"'I must be going. Lecture’s over. I hope I’ve clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold stead. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.'"

Over this winter break, I've been catching up (and getting ahead of) some reading, both recreational and required. I've decided to scan the "Reading List" shelves at our local library for classics I haven't yet read but should. Amazingly, despite hearing so much about them, I realized I hadn't read either Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) or The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells). So I picked them up - slim volumes both - intending to read them quickly and then turn to the next set of as-yet-unread classics. Of course, reading classics is never so automatic an exercise, for once read, they are pondered and wondered and churned over for many days to come.

The relevance of Bradbury's book will strike any first-time reader as prescient, but I found within its greater warning of censorship and intellectual decline a more personal story-within-a-story of social courage, insight, and independence. This was the story of Clarisse McClellan, a teenage girl and neighbor of the main character, Guy Montag's. I really don't have to describe Clarisse, because in about a page she delivers the most exact and penetrating account of herself and her observations of society. I had to share it with you, because I think it is not only a telling indictment of our schools and ideas of "socialization" - she simply embodies the outsider and thinker, and the vital necessity of those roles today and always.

Excerpt, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, pp. 29-31 

"'Oh, they don’t miss me,' she said. ‘I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.’ She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. ‘Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed to head for a Fun Park and bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing “chicken” and “knock hubcaps.” I guess I’m everything they say I am, all right. I haven’t any friends. That’s supposed to prove I’m abnormal. But everyone I know it either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?’

"'You sound so old.’

"'Sometimes I’m ancient. I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always used to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn’t kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. They believed in responsibility, my uncle says. Do you know, I’m responsible. I was spanked when I needed it, years ago. And I do all the shopping and housecleaning by hand.”

"'But most of all,’ she said, ‘I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they’re going. Sometimes I even go to the Run Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don’t care as long as they’re insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone’s happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?”

"'What?’

"'People don’t talk about anything.’

"'Oh, they must!’

"'No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how sell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the caves they have the joke boxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the colored patterns running up and down, but it’s only color and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That’s all there is now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes pictures said things or even showed people.’

"'Your uncle said, your uncle said. Your uncle must be a remarkable man.’

"'He is. He certainly is. Well, I got to be going. Good-bye, Mr. Montag.’

"'Good-bye.’

"'Good-bye….’”

I know my last blog entry was a shamefully long time ago (all the way back in June!), and I won't qualify my absence with that ever-useful qualifier (But I was busy! But I started school! But, but, I'm doing stuff!) Sorry sista. That's just not good enough.

Truth is, I haven't really felt like writing. I've been busy, it's true, but I also misplaced my creative drive somewhere over the summer. It kind of wandered off and I've had to spend a while tracking it down again. But now that school's started I feel my intellectual curiosity surge a bit - especially with classmates from Mauritania, Bahrain, Russia, and South Korea.

With that in mind, I'm going to post to this blog a journal entry I wrote for my World of Islam class. Professor K asked us to sum up, in about a page, our background, what we think about Islam, and what we expect to gain from her class. It was a good basic assignment - no glitter but a sliver of real substance. Here's what I came up with. As a bonus, it might address some of your questions about me (the person behind the "alias"), stuff I rarely share. Also, I'd love to stir some thoughts in you, as well. What do you think of Islam? Do you know any Muslims? How does the media influence our views of certain groups and how do those groups conform or differ from our preconceptions? Anyway, just think about it.

A Different Kind of 'Ammo'

You might say that my life began when I was eleven. How could this be? Surely I had lived those ten years previous, going to school, learning to swim, staring up at that particular pinecone in that particular tree. Yes. All that is true – I was born in California, grew up in Florida, moved to DC at age six, lived here for four-plus years, and then….

When I was eleven my family moved to Israel.

People normally assume that I’m Jewish, for why else would I move to Israel? But while I have some Jewish blood, I am actually Bahá’i. The Bahá’i Faith is a newcomer to the great monotheistic religions, but the revelations received our prophet founder, Bahá’u’llah, resonate with that lineage. Like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Bahá’is hold that certain spiritual truths – like the “Golden Rule”, respect for parents, honesty and chastity – are at the nexus of ethical living. However, Bahá’u’llah augmented the teachings of the past, especially the social laws, to renew age-old faith through a unifying, progressive worldview.

Like other faiths, Bahá’is consider Israel to be the Holy Land, for it was there that Bahá’u’llah was exiled in the last years of his life to the ancient seaport of Akko. An Iranian by birth, Bahá’u’llah was considered a threat by the government (like Moses and Christ and Muhammad) though his actions were not incendiary by peaceful, his words inclusive not cultish. Being the last resting place of our prophet has bestowed Israel with prime significance for Bahá’i faithful. Haifa, very near Akko, houses our administrative and spiritual center, the Bahá’i World Centre.

My family moved to Israel to lend our services to the World Centre, and it was there that I met people from Nigeria, Norway, Slovenia, Greece, Trinidad, and Chile, heard music and saw art and dance from the Philippines and Mongolia. Interacting with the broader Israeli society, I learned that “Mideast crisis” is more than a sound byte – and more than just simple division. Our neighbors were Arab Christians; our mechanic was Arab Muslim but also an Israeli citizen; the fruit vendors and taxi drivers, Arab and Israeli both, didn’t harbor much (or any) vitriol against the other. They just wanted peace and a chance to build their livelihoods.

My view of Muslims changed during this period, too. While I had always respected Islam, I had never explored it in any great depth. But living at the crossroads of history made me newly curious about religion of all kinds. So I read Karen Armstrong’s A History of God; Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels; the New Testament. I read about the life of Muhammad, visited the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. I even picked up a copy of Salman Rushdie’s contentious book, The Satanic Verses. I didn’t want to approach Islam from a single vantage point – but neither did I look upon it with the extreme skepticism that necessarily breeds Western arrogance and shortsightedness.

Which is the reason I’m taking this class – to gain new insight, hear different perspectives, and participate in discussions with those who might not see things as I do. While I would like some of my views to be validated, I am more interested in grappling with difficult issues, trying to fit my mind around such painful and present topics as terrorism, faith, separation (or combination) of church and state, gender equity, etc. I hope to come away with some real ammunition: Not the gun-kind – the knowledge-kind that enables me to say, “Hey, I know a bit about Islam. It’s more complex than you might think….”

Ok. Having properly grabbed your attention, I should clarify: It wasn't exactly "my" evening with Al Gore. Rather, friends and I attended a lecture he was giving while on tour promoting his new book, The Assault on Reason (read an excerpt HERE). I have to say it was quite something. We took the Metro into downtown DC, to Lisner Auditorium, part of the George Washington University campus. Fortunately, my friend J is a member of Politics & Prose bookstore, which was sponsoring the event, and purchased us tickets in advance. The lines for will-call and standing-room only were packed!

We arrived about an hour ahead of time, and got nicely situated about 6 rows from the front. Being close to the front was preferable, not only for better vision, but also because the following book-signing was to be conducted by row - working backward from the front. A few dollars extra bought us a copy of Gore's book, which we were able to skim while waiting for the Veep himself to arrive.

You could tell that the vast majority of the audience were avid Gore supporters. One guy was wearing a shirt - "Impeach Bush". The few kids were obviously brought by parents eager for their offspring to get a first-hand glimpse of the self-described "former next president of the United States". There was a visible buzz. Outside the auditorium, a few protesters were gathered, some memorably dressed as panda bears, apparently representing "pandering to special interest groups". A couple handed out flyers denouncing global warming as a hoax. Mmm hmmm. Well, as everyone who's taken an introductory civics class knows, this country was built on the principles of free thought and speech. It's also built on the principle of not having to agree with whatever other people are saying - including the "global-warming-as-hoax" minority.

Anyway, on stage were set up three chairs, two for the Politics & Prose ladies (the founders/owners of the independent store) and one for the President of GW University, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg (who several days later was to step down as president after a long tenure). When Gore arrived, the place exploded. Cheers. A standing ovation before two words had been uttered. One of the P&P ladies spoke, then President Trachtenberg introduced Al Gore.

I won't go into the details of Gore's address, which more or less was a summation and slight elaboration on the introduction and main concepts of his book. I will, however, tell you that Gore is a more natural speaker than people (myself included) gave him credit for as vice president. Then, his speaking style tended to stiff and a bit emotionless, especially when contrasted with Bill Clinton's folksy charm. Now, however, his politicking days (apparently) behind him, Gore seems freer, a more genuine incarnation of his previous self. Because although Al Gore has always been a climate advocate, never before has his voice been so impassioned - and so arresting. Before, people were like, "Oh yeah. Global warming. It would be nice if winter was shorter." Now people are realizing the drastic consequences of a shift of one or two degrees. And Gore's geeky-if-mishandled-but-intense-in-the-right-hands slideshow-cum-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, won him accolades and two Oscars. Never before has global warming been so sexy.

But appearance has little to do with Gore these day, so it seems. He really wants to talk about the issues, and his knowledge and convictions are clear. Many times during the course of his half-hour speech, the audience broke into passionate applause when a statement of his struck a chord. Gore was definitely preaching to the choir at this event, but it's a pretty large and motivated choir, and Gore's speech seemed like that of a general rallying his troops. I didn't think all that he said was that new, or even, that innovative or fresh. But it was important and needed to be said, and God only knows that in this country, truth spoken once is never enough - especially if it's "inconvenient".

A few hecklers made it into the hall. One girl got up during the Q&A session (questions had been written on slips of paper and collected beforehand), and proceeded to ask Gore some question about the third world. Her question might have been good, but her method was totally brazen and unfortunate. Then, after she was put in her place (by Miss P&P herself), a guy stood up in the far back and shouted some grievances at Gore. He kept going until a police officer came in (and shouted, "Shut-UP!") and marched him out. Miss P&P then said, with perfect poise, "When people show disrespect like that, they are an example of an assault on reason." And of course, everyone clapped.

So by now the evening was wrapping up, Gore made a few concluding comments, more applause (and another standing ovation) ensued, and then....we sat back and waited to be called for the book-signing.

I had forgotten to bring a business card with me, but I really wanted to give Gore my website address. So I torn off a piece of the program (neatly) and put down AliasEliot’s URL. On stage, with a desk now replacing the podium, I handed him the slip which he graciously took, put in his pants' pocket, and smiled. Cool, I thought. I actually had the guts to carry this off.

That about wraps up my evening with Al Gore, except for the Metro ride home and a stimulating conversation with friends J and N about the merits (and few demerits) of Gore’s talk. The photos I took unfortunately came out pretty blurry (my camera was almost out of battery), but at least you can get an idea of what was going on. I won't say, Rush out and buy a copy of Gore's book right away. But I will say, participate in democracy! Read, learn, and act. That, distilled, is what I think Gore would advocate, too.

I made this video the other day (actually it took me several days) because I wanted to add some more multimedia elements to AliasEliot. Initially, I posted it to the Home page - but it slowed things down too much. So now it's here, and I hope you watch it and perhaps send the link to friends if you like it.

The hardest part was finding appropriate background music. I had the perfect song in mind - "Celebration Guns" by Stars. But it's subject to copyright protection. So I found a royalty-free song online called "Broken Reflection". I think it works quite well. I like to think of us all as "broken reflections" of each other, similar yet still unique. The images depict human suffering, but also the hope and triumph of the spirit over circumstances dire and tragic.

In the coming weeks I'll try to post a few more videos, on other subjects and free for distribution. No promises though - it's very, very time-consuming!

But then my mind goes back to the crisis in Darfur - a slaughter as brutal and pointless as Virginia Tech's - with the dead numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Never has Darfur graced the cover of TIME magazine. Indeed, I have yet to see a popular newsweekly giving prominent placement to this carnage. And so the question arises: Why does the death of one, two, or 32 create intense emotions, debate, and action, while the insensible murder of hundreds, thousands, or millions leaves barely a trace on our collective memory?

This week, several studies have been published attempting to answer just this question. In both New Scientist and The Atlantic, Stalin's pronouncement, "One man's death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic," is raised, for the purpose of understanding why this truism is, in fact, true. The answers generated are interesting, and should raise deeper, more searching questions about the nature of loss and our response to negligence and corruption.

The Atlantic notes: "When participants in a study were asked to donate money either to a starving girl in Mali or to a larger group of famine victims represented only by a number, they gave significantly greater amounts to the wide-eyed girl. Moreover, contributions to the starving girl actually dropped when statistical information about the number of people suffering from severe hunger accompanied the girl's name and picture."

The article in New Scientist was written by Paul Slovic, who, with fellow researchers, conducted the study mentioned above. In a follow-up study, he and his colleagues found "that people felt less compassion and donated less aid towards a pair of victims than to either individual alone."

How do the scientists interpret this seemingly paradoxical behavior? Psychologist Daniel Batson of the University of Kansas believes that compassion is "a fragile flower, easily crushed." Slovic goes on to say that, "Faced with genocide, we cannot rely on our moral intuitions alone to guide us to act properly."

I disagree. I do not believe that the studies' participants lacked compassion for the gruesome statistics, nor that their compassion was diminished when one turned into many. Rather, I think their compassion seemed to target the starving girl over the starving masses because to affect the life of one is to have a real, calculable, quantifiable impact. Your money is going to a tangible, trackable human being over an intangible, amorphous concept: "famine", "genocide", "disease". Donating to a concept or a statistic, especially when those concepts and statistics are beyond normal ken, is ineffable and oftentimes ineffectual. It's not our lack of compassion - it's that we are endowed with common sense too.

Let's look at some numbers. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, in the United States in 2001, 89% of households gave to charities. That year, the average annual contribution per household was $1,620. And giving continues to rise. From 2004 to 2005, there was a 6.1% increase in total national giving. Where does this money go? To those charities, religious organizations, and non-governmental organizations that champion a particular cause, a particular need, a particular "concept". In general, people do not give to other people but to those organizations that promise widespread and lasting change.

So it would seem that there is a disconnect between what we do generally (giving to big charitable causes) and what we feel personally (giving to the hungry child over the starving masses). It would also seem that our human capacity for compassion and empathy is torn by our knowledge of "the way things are" - the realization that even the $260.28 billion we spent on charity in 2005 was not nearly enough to change the status quo, to staunch the bleeding, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. Those participants in Paul Slovic and colleagues' studies were expressing, subconsciously, this knowledge, as well as the understanding that charitable giving often goes to cover operation costs, workers' salaries, and bureaucratic machinery of one sort or another. If you give to the organization, your money is, for all practical purposes, lost. But if you give to that single person standing before you holding out their hand, the chances that you'll personally effect change is suddenly greater.

Of course, clever marketers have been aware of this "power of one" attraction for a long time. Go to almost any NGO's website and the first thing you'll see is a solemn-looking African mother (if you're meant to feel guilty), a smiling Asian farmer (if you're meant to feel hopeful), or a classroom of poor but studious children (if you're meant to feel needed). Marketers know that you will be more compelled to part with your money if you feel that it is directly aiding those endearing individuals in those glossy spreads. Dig a little deeper, however, and you will probably find a percentage breakdown of where, in reality, your money goes. I can tell you from experience that it's rarely to that pretty child in the too-large t-shirt.

This marketing strategy is what I call the "one-in-a-million rule". Though it's been employed many times, I don't think it's ever been properly recognized or named. It works like this: aid organizations must give a face to the enormity of human suffering it is their task to broadcast and remedy. They choose a photogenic individual as their "cover person" whose task it is to represent his thousands or millions of fellow sufferers. A large task for such narrow shoulders, but a necessary one to move donors and save lives. Some might look on the one-in-a-million rule as a callous exploitation of the weak - and sometimes it is. We must be careful that a hungry or sick child is never abused to fill greedy pockets or distract from covert operations. But the one-in-a-million rule (or 1+MIL for short) can be used altruistically too. For those of us moved by compassion but stymied by the enormity of need, focusing on one person can often be the perfect tool for breaking the bottleneck and delievering necessary succor.

The debate, it seems to me, should be changed from one about our capacity for compassion to one about the state of global aid and governments' response to human rights violations. In his article for New Scientist, Paul Slovic makes a good point. He says, "...it is time to look at the weaknesses in the [1948 United Nations genocide] convention. We need to design legal and institutional mechanisms that will force nations to act against genocide and other crimes against humanity. Leaving things as they are makes it too easy to do nothing."

I believe in humans' tremendous gift for compassion and empathy. I subtitled this website Active Empathy because I believe that is exactly what is needed to address the dilemma between compassion and common sense. Empathy taps into the common blood that flows through us. It is a state as simple as it is profound: I am you and you are me. But empathy without action soon leads to despair, the sense of being completely overwhelmed by the endless torrent of human pain. I call upon myself just as I call upon others to make a concerted effort to change the status quo and ensure the alleviation of unnecessary suffering. Let's use the 1+MIL rule to ensure that the child in Mali lives long enough and full enough to experience joy and disappointment, laughter and hurt. The complexities of being human are, after all, difficult enough without the addition of preventable iniquities.

Sources:

1. "When Compassion Fails", Paul Slovic, New Scientist
   
2. "Stalin Was Right", Primary Sources, The Atlantic
3. Philanthropy Statistics, National Philanthropic Trust
   

But campus shootings are also deeply personal; they strike us where the pain hurts most. Our children, our students - so many of whom are active, intelligent, giving human beings - are the ones we hope for, the ones into which we pour time, money, and resources as investments in a brighter future. I can think of few parents who wouldn't want a better life for their children and grandchildren. And a better life often means a better education. Today, so much emphasis is placed on higher education that culture wars revolve around admissions, student loans, school ranking, and teacher tenure. Yet, despite astronomical tuition fees, many parents willingly put themselves in hock to finance what they see as the golden ticket to their child's success.

All the more reason to be shocked and sickened when, today, the place in which parents placed their highest hopes turned into a vortex of their worst fears.

My parents were the first in both their families to receive bachelor's, then master's degrees. I've never known a time when education and college were not focal points in my unfolding life. But my concept of college was highly skewed and for the most part inaccurate. From the age of six when I entered grade school, I prepared myself for "homework on the weekends". When it didn't materialize, I was certain it would next year. Eight years later, at the end of middle school, I finally was inducted into the Weekend Work club. It was an anticlimax, certainly, but made me feel important all the same. "Sorry, no can do. I've got homework."

And then, overnight, an avalanche. From an hour here and there, ninth grade exploded into a veritable supernova of work. Tests, projects, worksheets, slideshows - it was as if the teachers were remedying the eight-year drought with a four-year flood. The summer before I went to college, the summer I had dreamed of and prayed for since kindergarten, was a painful exercise in exhaustion and apathy. Nearly two decades of excitement were swept away in dread. "No please, no more homework...."

And I was right to feel dread. The work wasn't that hard in college, but nor was it stimulating, provocative, or enlightening. In the first semester alone, I saw so many students questioning their decision to attend college. "Why am I here? Why am I here and not learning the real stuff of life?" But colleges do one thing extremely well. They know how to insulate. The stuff of life in oftentimes cold and difficult and colleges, like dutiful parents, want to protect their offspring from the winds that blow. We expect this of them, and when they fail, as was so forcefully illustrated by today's killings, it is then that we ask ourselves why. "Why couldn't they protect their wards? Why wasn't security better? Why did those 32 die and not another 32? Why did they have to die in the first place?"

It is in these moments of questioning that the real truths come. Not just about college, but about the state of our world in general.

College is almost a perfect analogue to life itself. You have your immediate bosses (professors), some of whom you like, others - not so much. You have a hierarchy of executive power, a judicial branch, legislative bodies influenced by special interest groups. You have the patricians (also known as legacy students) and the plebeians (boot-strappers and scholarship kids). You have petty thieves and a few hardened criminals. But everyone pretty much knows their place, and the few crimes and misdemeanors that occur are just part of the show. In life too, armed assault, drug rings, gang rivalries, prostitution, and rape don't make the headlines like one-offs do because of how we perceive them: as regrettable yet unavoidable.

Things like today's killings are seen as avoidable and thus condemned, but those condemnable acts that happen so often we've become inured to them - we brush them off and continue on our way. Colleges, and schools in general, might help remedy this situation if only by fostering an attitude of mindful responsiveness to world events. Instead of allowing students to become indoctrinated with the same notions of establishment as previous generations, it might be worth analyzing, discussing, and suggesting alternatives to the "way things are done".

The killings at Virginia Tech were unavoidable by any human system already in place - be it college administration or police. Whatever grievance was in the mind of that deranged person, it wasn't going to be released except by pulling the trigger. No one is to blame - or maybe we all are. It is too soon after the tragedy to evaluate its significance or establish a proper infrastructure for the care of angry and disturbed individuals. Even so, even with a network of counseling, community, reintegration, and purposeful living in place, who’s to say that that will be prevention enough? The healing of the world will take time, a time prolonged by heartbreak like today's.

I guess the only real comfort I feel able to offer the victims' families - offer us all, in fact - is the defiant promise that none of the lives lost today, tomorrow, and in all the tomorrows until life resembles fair will go unnoted or without force. The hemorrhaging of innocents drains the vitality of us all. Schools and the rest of us should note this instead of hiding from it, for there is no protection from our own blindness and fear. It may seem counterintuitive, but by showing our young people pain, we can help them develop the tools to heal it. The pain of today's killings has opened many to the brutality of loss. Perhaps it will also inspire them to the necessity of action.

In countless articles, the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been referred to by variants of the phrase, "the day the world changed." But, as a startling letter to the editor of TIME Magazine pointed out: The world didn't change on 9/11 - America's perception of it, and of its place in it, did. Of course, many things in the world did change after 9/11. The Bush Administration declared war on Afghanistan and its Taliban presence, and shortly afterwards concocted an excuse to invade Iraq. Extremist voices everywhere found courage in those attacks, and in places as far-flung as Indonesia, Britain, and Russia came out of the woodwork to declare their hatred of the West.

But the letter's point is well taken. The rest of the world has dealt with terrorism for a long time. By virtue of its geography (isolated by two imposing oceans) as well as its wealth and political stature, the United States has typically assumed a place of lofty indifference when it comes to global problems unrelated to its own prosperity. Look at Rwanda in the 1990s. Look at present-day Darfur. Ethics are a tough sell when they don't enhance the bottom line. In the traditional view, draining American tax money to aid poor countries without hope of a kickback is not only bad fiscal policy – it endangers a president's right to reelection. Keeping the voters happy means keeping their pocketbooks full. And while this isn't necessarily harmful in itself, politics at the expense (literally) of moral judgment leads to just the kind of global animosity the West is confronting today.

9/11 was a wake-up call. It certainly was not an isolated event, and cannot be taken as such. But the Bush Administration's rally against an "axis of evil" and its "war on terror" are a complete misrepresentation of the real dangers of terrorism, as well as the wide range of its effects. First, how do we define "terrorism"? According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, terrorism is "the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion." In this case, dozens of countries harbor terrorists. But its second definition, "violent and intimidating gang activity," inducts hundreds of countries into the circle of terror - including the US.

A true war on terror, then, would be a paradox of sorts, a battle that looks both in and out – in, at our own contribution to terror, and out at other countries'. If terror is ever to be truly addressed, each government should adopt this same "in-and-out" vision. The psychology of nations mirrors the psychology of individuals. Just as a single person cannot hope to influence another person's behavior unless he has first addressed his own, so too nations cannot condemn other nations' policies without first curbing their own escalating violence.

The United States government does not overstate the threat of terror. But terror, according to its definition, is solely a case of the "Other". And that Other seems only to pop up exactly where we want it to: in North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela. Until our government comes to terms with its own part in global terrorism, and until every government is implicated in its bloody ubiquity, no number of wars, no amount of death, will suffice to quell its danger.

The excruciating brazenness of 9/11 confronted Americans with the shameful disregard for human life that so many other countries take as their daily bread and water. But while the graphic losses of that day ensured their entombment in the national psyche, they have sadly not led to a better understanding of terror and terrorists - from the suicide bombers of Iraq, to the janjaweed killers in Sudan, to the sex offenders and gang members that plague America's cities. A war on terror is crucial and should include a concerted effort on the part of all upstanding governments. But terrorism is not the sole domain of mad mullahs and wild fanatics. Unless we redefine what is meant by terror, capturing its essence and exposing it to light, its amorphous shadow will continue to evade us.

Terrorism by Number:

1. The Trail of Tears – the forced migration in 1838 of thousands of Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma – resulted in the death of over 4000 Cherokee Indians.
2. In the United States from 2004-2005, there was an average annual 200,780 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.
3. In the United States in 2005, there were 1,055,000 reported serious violent crimes (which include rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and homicide) and 603,500 arrests.
4. In Darfur, Sudan since February 2003, more than 300,000 people have been killed in an organized campaign of mass terror, starvation, rape, and murder. 2.5 million more people have been displaced.
5. During the Rwandan Genocide (beginning 7 April 1994), 1,000,000 innocent people were slaughtered over the course of 100 days.
6. Between the years 1970 and 1980, from a population of near 7,100,000, Cambodia lost nearly 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
7. In Iraq, the Department of Justice has confirmed the deaths of 3244 service men and women since the war began in 2003.
8. While there is no definitive figure, estimates place the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war (2003-2007) between 54,000 (most likely a vast underestimate, but promoted by the Bush Administration) and 600,000 (a contested number). The true figure probably ranges in the hundreds of thousands.

Statistic Sources:

1. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html
2. http://www.rainn.org/statistics/index.html
3. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/4meastab.htm
4. http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/darfurinfo/
5. http://www.survivors-fund.org.uk/history/stats_rwan.htm
6. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP4.HTM
7. http://icasualties.org/oif/
8. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html?ei=5088&en=516b1d070ff83c15&ex=1318219200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print