Sunday, July 5, 2009

More on slavery

Our pastor referred to A Crime So Monstrous in today's sermon, and the International Justice Mission.
Posted by Laserlight at 9:19 PM
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2 comments:

Lux Mentis said...

In the civilized world, we take freedom for granted. We do this in small ways, by letting our legislators and authorities erode it in small chunks daily. We do it in big ways by talking a big game about halting evil such as genocide and slavery, but then not actually doing much about it.

We've spent so much money fighting drugs and fighting terrorism, the former something we're not likely to beat (much like fighting prostitution) as there is a market for it even within our own countries and the latter we can't defeat because you can't kill an idea...

....meanwhile.....

Slavery of men, women and children all over the world. Trafficking in children for the purposes of labour or the sex-trade. If that doesn't immediately revolt you, then you're not terribly human.

If we can agree (the sane of us) that what Hitler and Stalin and Mao and others have done (genocide) is wrong and we value freedom and liberty and protecting children so much....

WHERE'S OUR WAR ON SLAVERY?

July 8, 2009 at 3:43 PM
BB said...

Most people will agree that selling children as sex slaves, etc. is horrible and should come to an end immediately. Unfortunately the human mind is not wired to respond to vague threats to unnamed persons, and overall that's for the best.

The Human mind is responsive to threats to itself primarily, that's basic instinct. Next in the hierarchy are threats to children and other close loved ones, but even that is in a descending order that falls off pretty quickly somewhere around Mother-In-Law :)

Joking aside, my point is that while you will jump and scream and run from a deadly animal, you will not have the same reaction to a news report of child sex slaves living just 3 doors away. It's just as well, the stress of such constant reactions would kill you rather quickly. If it isn't an immediate threat, it just doesn't rate very high. There are millions of examples of this from not brushing your teeth to failing to change the oil in your car. People are motivated by the crisis and pain and torment of an immediately threatening nature. Many are not capable of doing otherwise even when they know the consequences of their behavior (overeating, cigarette smoking, frat parties, not saving for retirement).

The ability to rise above that programming and do the "right" thing at an expense to ourselves is supposed to be our goal, right? It's what separates us from the beasts according to some. If you fall short as an individual it is called a character flaw. If we fall short as a society we get a label fit for a group, and when we fall short as a species you get what we have here today.

And this is the way it should be. This is what has made us successful as a species. Survival Of The Fittest is alive and well, no matter how many preemie babies we save or terminal cancer patients we keep alive for 6 more months. Our primary goal is to save ourselves.

Any individual is free to tackle whatever issues he sees fit to tackle in the world, and there are groups aligned to help with all of the problems listed in these posts. These groups are run and staffed by people who have decided that their own needs are secondary, or that their own needs are adequately met and managed. The expectation that the world as a whole should respond in kind is unrealistic.

We all got problems man,
see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If we can't manage our own lives, how can we manage others? You will never see the following headline in a newspaper, "AIDS sufferers call for an end to child slavery", because AIDS patients have other things to worry about. Nor will you see that headline in regard to people who are about to have their power turned off, live next door to a toxic landfill, or who haven't changed their oil in 10,000 miles.

As long as dentists can't get people to floss we're going to wrestle with things like child slavery and the other evils of the human collective. We're individuals bent on self-preservation, and it takes a lot of doing to get us to behave differently.

July 11, 2009 at 11:24 PM

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