What’s wrong with people?
7:28 am, March 21, 2009
· Filed under Life, Online, Society, philosophy, religion, youtube · Tagged africa, complex thinking, darfur, genocide, global problems, Hank Green, HP Alliance, imagining the other complexly, john green, killing, nerdfighters, rwanda, vlogbrothers, world, youtube comments
Today I was having a blast on Spring Break (ha! Not really…) and browsing through Youtube, because that’s what I do. Still featured on there was John Green’s video on the Rwandan Genocide and the HP Alliance’s idea from Rwanda to have real people light candles and show that they care for their problems, which are all of our problems. It was a funny, yet serious video about how to help stop a problem.
Then I scrolled down to see the comments, and to my horror, people had posted comments not only against HPA’s initiative, but against stopping, preventing, or helping deal with genocide in Africa. There were mainly three categories of diversion from John and most people’s philosophy on this:
- Who cares about Africa? They’re poor and miserable and different from us. We should take care of ourselves first; for we are the only people that matter, and it’s their problem not ours. They should deal with it themelves, not mooch off of our charity.
Ok maybe they weren’t that articulate or intentionally harsh, but that’s pretty much their idea. And I’ll elaborate with example 3.
- Sure, the travesty in Rwanda and Darfur are abominations of mankind, and we should certainly make an earnest effort to prevent it from happening, and help restore the country(-ies), but lighting candles won’t help that. Maybe you should put links or show how we can donate and actually take action for this cause?
And this is certainly a valid argument, and I like that people are thinking compexly about this. I for one apparently love to be proven wrong (even indirectly like this), and I’m glad I can broaden my view on the matter. But it’s an act to show people that we care and are going to help – that they have support, and that it’s not their problem, it’s the world’s problem.
There’s a great value in a small thing – especially when a community collectively responds – that has a great effect on people. It may not be objective or scientifically provable, but it’s there. People in Rwanda will actually see us showing our support. Of course we have to take political action, but it starts somewhere small, and if we want the Big Guys to notice, we gotta make noise!I definitely think that we should really be taking action in donations and awareness would help a lot.
- Then there’s this:
What can I say? It’s hard to believe people can be so selfish and animalistic, caring only for themselves ans seeing the world with such warped values. I’m all for diversity of opinions, which is essential to social (and any) progress, but people have to think complexly about these problems…
I mean that’s just not right. I really don’t have a problem with religion, as long as it’s well thought out, criticized, and thought about deeper than stuff like the Bible and God. And that’s not even the problem here; it’s that people can be so stupid and barbaric in simple thinking, that they completely isolete themselves emotionally from the world, and refuse to care about the world.It’s people like this that really scare me, and make me fear for the future….
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What’s wrong with people?
7:28 am, March 21, 2009 · Filed under Life, Online, Society, philosophy, religion, youtube · Tagged africa, complex thinking, darfur, genocide, global problems, Hank Green, HP Alliance, imagining the other complexly, john green, killing, nerdfighters, rwanda, vlogbrothers, world, youtube comments
Today I was having a blast on Spring Break (ha! Not really…) and browsing through Youtube, because that’s what I do. Still featured on there was John Green’s video on the Rwandan Genocide and the HP Alliance’s idea from Rwanda to have real people light candles and show that they care for their problems, which are all of our problems. It was a funny, yet serious video about how to help stop a problem.
Then I scrolled down to see the comments, and to my horror, people had posted comments not only against HPA’s initiative, but against stopping, preventing, or helping deal with genocide in Africa. There were mainly three categories of diversion from John and most people’s philosophy on this:
Ok maybe they weren’t that articulate or intentionally harsh, but that’s pretty much their idea. And I’ll elaborate with example 3.
And this is certainly a valid argument, and I like that people are thinking compexly about this. I for one apparently love to be proven wrong (even indirectly like this), and I’m glad I can broaden my view on the matter. But it’s an act to show people that we care and are going to help – that they have support, and that it’s not their problem, it’s the world’s problem.
There’s a great value in a small thing – especially when a community collectively responds – that has a great effect on people. It may not be objective or scientifically provable, but it’s there. People in Rwanda will actually see us showing our support. Of course we have to take political action, but it starts somewhere small, and if we want the Big Guys to notice, we gotta make noise!I definitely think that we should really be taking action in donations and awareness would help a lot.
What can I say? It’s hard to believe people can be so selfish and animalistic, caring only for themselves ans seeing the world with such warped values. I’m all for diversity of opinions, which is essential to social (and any) progress, but people have to think complexly about these problems…
I mean that’s just not right. I really don’t have a problem with religion, as long as it’s well thought out, criticized, and thought about deeper than stuff like the Bible and God. And that’s not even the problem here; it’s that people can be so stupid and barbaric in simple thinking, that they completely isolete themselves emotionally from the world, and refuse to care about the world.It’s people like this that really scare me, and make me fear for the future….