Pursuing praxis

Civilzation is so under-rated. I suppose some people seek out experiences in undeveloped areas for the sake of appreciating what they do have when they return from such places. It’s a frequent effect, in any case. But I doubt that is the motivation for all people these days. What I can’t comprehend is people championing backward ways of living because they are backward or - more likely - because they are not civilized, not rational, not Western, not 21st century.

I wonder how many people actually think that groups of "indigenous" people actually want to keep the status quo, or even "go back" to what they had "before." (Whatever exactly that means - tribal ways of life changed rapidly and often directionally long before Western culture came on the scene. Cultures have been going extinct as long as they’ve been around). Which, if you remind them, means no cars, no cellphones, no modern medicine, no health insurance, no guns, often no property rights, no literacy, no mathematical skill, the list goes on. All gifts of Western culture - the culture of reason, of productivity, of ambition, of wealth, of health, and of independence - independence from disease, poverty and ignorance as well as your family, your neighbors and the state. Freedom from people is still a totally foreign concept in many parts of the world - developed and developing - and social dependence of one form or another is the elephant no one knows how to name or describe.

Most Kenyans I met liked their country - they always encouraged me to come back. Most Kenyans I met who had ambitions and goals for themselves, who were working to make a better life for themselves, wanted to come to America, and several told me, unabashedly and factually, that America was the best country on earth. How many urban Americans, who in many ways "have the most" of all Americans, would agree, much less say it without squirming? Many Americans I know have what you might call "Western guilt" - guilt over being the most wealthy, most powerful, and most influential country ever. They accept the idea that they - personally, as an individual American - inherit the blame, fault and guilt of every wrong action (real or imagined) of past administrations, past generations, past values. Their values are a long list of nots. Not-Western, not-capitalist, not-commercial, not-logical, not-valued, not-capable, not-established, not-like-this, not-like-me. They acknowledge and submit to the tribalism that motivates families to senselessly feud for generations, countries to attack each other for hundreds of years, and cultural and ethnic groups to blindly hate each other because "they" are not "us." Except here the tribalism is reversed: instead of hating everyone who’s not like you, the sentiment is to hate, loathe, or bemoan your own tribe (and self) and elevate everything that fits the formula of not-me.

It’s a much more peaceable and self-contained method of destruction than the two-party clashes of traditional tribalism: you just attack and punish yourself, no one else gets hurt. Except that never happens - self destruction isn’t good enough. The motivation is to get as many people to agree with you as possible, so that you are not alone in with your guilt and self-hate. You join the classic tribalists in denouncing and destroying what you are and what you stand for, all while taking a morally superior tone. But there’s nothing superior about suicide.

Such people buy into tribalism on another level - that of time. One’s identity and personal responsibility extend not just to himself, but to his ancestors, be it biological, cultural, religious, or intellectual. Americans today feel responsible for actions against Native Americans that occured generations ago - starting with the arrival of the first mass of Europeans in the 1600s! Americans often feel responsible for slavery which ended 150 years ago, and that white people owe black people some sort of debt - perhaps material, but certainly moral or spiritual. But black people in America today have not been slaves! Young blacks have not even experienced legal segregation. But there’s this sense of group responsibility and group blame that permeates the whole discussion. And the thing is: it rests on the validity of race as a measure of someone’s worth - that is, racism. The tables have just been turned. As I told many Kenyans: the greatest thing you can do the eliminate racism is to stop giving a damn about race. It’s not the important thing about anybody. Not you, not your country, not your continent, not Obama. Ask instead: what ideas does he hold, what decisions does he make, what actions does he take and why - what is his character? That’s what people have control of, and what they should be judged on. Those things are the measures of a man’s worth. 

A South African man I sat next to on the plane said the white people of Zimbabwe were so paralyzed, demoralized, and adrift because of "colonial guilt" that they don’t see that their country is imploding, and while all rational thought points to getting the hell out, they stay - unsure of what to think, what to say, what to do. Whatever bad things happen, they feel slightly responsible. And, accepting that guilt, the moral thing to do is to "suffer through," to accept the consequences. The moral thing to do, if the guilt is deserved, is to stay on the sinking ship. But what they fail to see is what all racists fail to see: unless a particular person has engaged in or given support to morally objectionable things like slavery, property confiscation, murder, racism, or countless other wrongdoings, he’s not culpable! He’s not guilty of those things! Yet white people the world over accept blame for the actions of generations past - sometimes very distantly past - as if guilt clung to the genes coding for skin color, and one inherited it along with a predisposition for sunburning.

I actually met a Kenyan who was a Christian creationist, and who believed that AIDS was a punishment from God: that anyone with AIDS obviously had done something wrong and deserved to die a horrible death. AIDS was a just act meted out by God. I explained how HIV was transmitted in blood, and how many many people have gotten HIV through no wrongdoing of their own - blood transfusions, pregnancy, through mishaps of others. He was unperturbed, and said that they must be paying for the mistakes of their ancestors.

His view of culpability was exactly the same as other tribalists - that one’s own actions in life do not determine one’s character, worth, or load of responsibility, that one is the slave of a group to which he involuntarily belongs. Family, race, time and place in history, demographic background - we have no choice over these. Yet this is how tribalists want to pigeonhole the world, in order to know how to deal with it. What such worldviews are incapable of dealing with, or really even comprehending, is the self-made man - he who fashions his ideas, character, actions and life by the free and self-chosen action of his own mind - the most defining and enabling aspect of being human.

In any case - I’m glad to be in a place with regular electricity, reliable internet, water you make hot for a shower, and that’s clean enough to drink out of the taps (first time in 4 months for that, actually), where bugs don’t swarm my food or vie for my bed, and toilets do their job when needed, the first time around. In 3.5 weeks I look forward to leaving behind barred windows, countless keys, razor wire, cut-glass and spike-topped fences, living inside a guarded gate, and staying inside after dark. In short, I look forward to home with increased freedom and prosperity.