Way Forward

I'm Walkin' on Sunshine, oh oh!

About Numbness and Action

My friend Scott just wrote a blog post about violence, the school shooting in Virginia, and the feeling of being stunned. Originally this was meant as a comment to his post, but then it turned into a blog entry instead:

It's so easy to become numb. There is a difficult balance between empathy and distance: if you're too empathetic your ability to help will drown in the misery of those who need you, and if you're too distanced it's hard to be involved enough to care. Often we end up in a paralyzing middle: we are left dazed, stunned, helpless, the misery is beyond our control, there's nothing we can do about it. And so we cry for a while, and then we go on with our lives believing that we are good people because at least our tears expressed our sympathy.

But this is of course, as the old proverb goes, the real danger: that evil happens because good people do nothing. Sympathy doesn't change the world and crying doesn't define our virtue. We need to escape numbness, and that does not mean escaping that which make us numb. We need to find that constructive, productive balance of just enough empathy to make us able to care and just enough distance to give us room to act.

And then we need to make a choice. No-one can save the whole world. We have to avoid taking in all of the world's misery at once. We have to acknowledge that it is there, and also remember that it has always been. The history of human cruelty didn't start with the Iraq war, or the six day war, or WW1. Cruelty is human. And so is morality. Morality is what gives shape to our integrity, it is what should guide us while we balance down the line trying to distribute the weight of empathy and distance evenly in our hearts. Morality is what make you say I object to this. The I refuse, the j'accuse, the thing that make you able to act and make a change. Do not be blinded and benumbed. Choose your focus, distance your empathy, and be assured that you can make a difference at that one point you want to fight for.

Said Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, commited citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Photos from Rashedie (2003)

Reality

Some people have to manage without their salaries
because somebody else didn't like the way they voted
Some people have less than a dollar a day to live for
Some people think it's ok to spend 3,700 dollars on a drink.

I pray that I never, ever
forget the responsibility that comes with my good fortune:
to fight for those who are not as fortunate
and never to accept the habitual blindness of those who are.

© Silje Ryvold, Bangkok Contrast (2002)

Save Beit Arabiya!

Imagine you grew up. Imagine you got married and wanted to build a house. And so you worked hard and then after some years you were finally able to buy a piece of land. In order to build a house, however, of course you would need a building permit. So you applied for one, while your family waited patiently to have a place to live. But then you didn't get the permit, for kafkaesque reasons that nobody could really explain. So you applied again. And then again, and each time you got a different explanation why you would not be permitted to build a small house on your own small piece of land. The basic problem seemed to be that the land was allegedly zoned as "agricultural" according to an obscure law from 1942 - and ignoring the fact that it would be impossible to grow anything there anyway because of the bad quality of the soil.

And so three unsuccessful attempts to obtain a building permit (each with a fee of 5,000$), you were forced to build your house "illegally", although you as a human being had a fundamental right to shelter, money to build it and your own land to build it on. Now, imagine that you lived in your house with your wife and seven children for four years. Then, with no prior warning, one day you were having breakfast, your house was surrounded by soldiers and tanks and you got 10 minutes to get out of the house. You tried to object, but then the bulldozers just started to destroy your house. You could do nothing but watch it happen. Imagine the fear of your children. Imagine the helplessness. Imagine how you would feel. It's not just about a house. It's about a home. Your private life. Your safety, your very human worth.

Now imagine that you rebuilt the house again.
Then it happened all over again; soldiers, tanks, bulldozers, humiliation, fear, loss.
But you rebuilt, and people from all over the world came to help out.
It didn't last long though; this time you managed to sleep one single night in your home before it was demolished for a third time.
And after that you even had to go through a fourth demolition and a fifth rebuilding, upon which you realized that you would never be allowed to live in your house.

What would you do?

This is the true story of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh, from the small village of Anata in the West Bank, just meters over the Jerusalem municipal boundary. After the fourth demolition they decided to dedicate their home as a peace center, a place where Palestinians, Israelis and internationals could meet in order to develop campaigns that would effectively end the Occupation, until that day when they could actually move in. It was named Beit Arabiya after the woman whose home it was.

Salim and Arabiya are not alone: Since 1967, Israel has demolished more than 12,000 Palestinian homes. Israel’s policy of house demolitions seeks to confine Palestinians to small enclaves, leaving most of the land free for Israeli settlement.

The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an Occupying Power to extend its law and administration to an occupied territory, rendering the very process of granting or denying permits to Palestinians, not to mention Israel’s policy of house demolitions, patently illegal under international humanitarian law.

On February 7, 2007, a three judge panel of the Israeli Supreme Court heard the second appeal of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh’s to have the 15-year demolition order on their home rescinded. They also petitioned the Court to instruct the authorities to issue them a building permit. A negative ruling is expected any day, and as soon as it is issued the Civil Administration, Israel’s military government over the Occupied Territories, can order the home demolished for the fifth time.

How much injustice can the world take?
How can the world allow these things to happen?
This is not happening in some far-away jungle outside the so-called civilized world, this is happening right in front of our eyes, in the Holy Land. Don't say we didn't know. Watch the video below, and if your heart is angered please read more on ICAHDs webpages for suggestions on what you can do.

The Reality of House Demolitions

Care about peace? Care about this. Hear Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh's story here.

Captured: Indifference

When I lived in Bangkok five years ago I used to take my camera for a walk when feeling lonely. I would wander around for hours, breathing in the infinitely polluted heat and noise of the City of Angels. There were times when I hated it, the beloved Krung Thep. But I soon learnt to see things differently: through the lens of my camera I discovered beauty in ugliness. Somehow it made me feel better. I still don't really understand why. This is from the Sala Daeng skytrain station, just a couple of blocks from my apartment.

Easter Interlude

1.
At that time there was neither non-existence nor existence; neither space nor the sky beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep?

2.
At that time there was neither death nor immortality. Nothing that distinguished night from day. The one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond.

3.
In the beginning darkness was hidden by darkness. With no distinguishing sign, all this - water. All that came into being, covered with emptiness, the one arose through the power of heat.

4.
Desire came upon the one in the beginning; that was the first seed of mind. Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom saw it as it was: that it is bound by that which is not.

5.
Their cord was extended across. Was there below? Was there above? There were seed-placers; there were powers. There was impulse beneath; there was giving-forth above.

6.
Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of the whole. Who then knows whence the whole?

7.
Whence this creation? Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not. The one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows—or perhaps he does not.

Rigveda 10.129, the Creation Hymn "Nasadiya"

(blind)

etterpå sitter jeg i en vinduskarm
og lurer på hvor jeg har
gjort av meg selv

trærne er nakne nå
og hustakene er bare hustak
under himmelen som bare er himmel
og meg
som er et annet sted

jeg ser etter tegn

det må finnes fotspor
bøyde strå
gjenglemte hansker
beretninger om hva som har hendt

jeg behøver en oppklaring

piler på grønne exit-skilt
lyden av en dør som slår igjen
en plutselig
frigjørende innsikt –

utsikten er like tydelig
som A’en i en stemmegaffel

og herfra ser jeg ingenting

© silje ryvold -2004


Edward Hopper, Morning Sun (1952)