Thinking too much from 2009

 Saturday, November 28, 2009

Complexities of Modern Life

Modern culture offers some complexities that weren't faced in the past. These questions of right and wrong aren't always answered by religion-- even if we follow a religion. They can form ethical conundrums if we stop to puzzle through them. Following are some examples of what I am thinking about.

Today we have people with enough money to travel wherever they wish, finding fascinating places to view, and then leaving supposedly without a trace of themselves left behind-- except some money. We also have people who live in those places, often very primitively. Those people are often part of the appeal for what today is referred to as adventure travelers.

So instead of taking a place over and changing it, the goal is keeping it as it was to make it interesting to see even if some live in poverty or worse to offer those views.

This is one such example: [Elephants or villagers]. To have something adventuring tourists will pay to see, the elephant population is allowed to grow and sometimes rampage. Although the country receives financial benefits from the tourists, the villagers receive only death and destruction. Complexities of modern life.


We do still have the problem of the old-fashioned taking over of a country and what does the rest of the world do about it? Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion is about Tibet with China doing the old-fashioned occupying and conquering after Mao became the ruler of China. They justified their actions as liberating the Tibetan people who had asked for no such liberation and often had to be killed to be forced to accept it along with accepting the occupying army and Chinese settlers.

I knew the story but always thought Tibet still existed even though the world had been ignoring what happened there. Then we got our newest National Geographic map where there is no Tibet. There is instead China and the Tibetan Plateau-- in short a recognition that Tibet has been officially swallowed.

Who would fight to protect the Tibetans? Certainly not the United States who is in debt up to its neck and above. Although the Dalai Lama said he understood and thinks Obama has other ways to move forward on things, our president didn't meet with the exiled leader of the Tibetan people when he came to Washington D.C recently which was a first. That happened likely because Obama planned a trip to China to whom we owe so much money that we cannot afford to offend their leadership. Taiwan, watch out!

Is the taking over of another country okay when it's one big enough doing it? The argument goes that it's okay because China originally had Tibet as part of its domain. Really? What else did China have besides that? We have seen the same argument with North and South Korea as well as Vietnam. The countries were once one-- pretty much everything was; so now it's okay to conquer it? Complexities of modern life.


On a smaller scale, we were recently at Finley Wildlife Refuge. It is a wonderful place set aside for birds and wildlife. It is a mostly safe place for them to live and breed... But all around it are grass seed fields where the geese love to graze. These are fields planted for families to make a living but so many geese can decimate the grasses. As a compromise there is hunting allowed sometimes to reduce the numbers of certain of the geese and ducks.

So it's beautiful to watch these swans, to listen to their calls to each other which were so melodic as to be almost like songs, and a very contradictory emotion to once in awhile hear the boom of nearby shotguns.

We had the experience recently at the farm when we walked up our road, saw a lot of geese in our pasture, grazing alongside the cattle; then watched them fly off thinking how beautiful-- only to within moments hear the boom of shotguns in the next valley about the time the birds would have flown over.

Farm Boss reassured me that it was skeet shooting. Maybe or maybe some of those beautiful birds were shot right after leaving the safety of our pasture. And how long and how many of them could we provide refuge in our pasture. The cattle and sheep also depend on that grass. Provide refuge. Don't provide refuge? Complexities of modern life.


Finally (well not really but one more of these examples of complexity) we watched on HBO the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves as part of an alien population who have decided humans are so abusing earth that they must be eliminated if the planet it to survive with habitability.

There wasn't a lot of story, but lots of special effects and one dominant question: Are humans worthy of having such a wonderful planet upon which to live? We say we own it but then argue over what that means, abuse it and each other, and can't agree on what quality of living means for ourselves or the earth. It was easy to make the alien's case for eliminating us as a species.

Of course, the thing is there are those among us who are worthy (most of us would start by naming our families, friends, and selves). In the film that was the case the humans made. We can change. We can do what is right. Give us another chance. But it was only at a point of disaster that humans were willing to do that. Would it change anything even if that happened?


How do we resolve these questions that it seems money decides everything. Want to visit a people at the price of elephants rampaging over them? No problem if you can afford it. With the complex lives some humans have, the appeal of viewing the simple life is very appealing-- so long as it's just as a voyeur.

Is there another way to figure out what is right to do? How about starting with the recognition that being able to afford something does not make it the right choice. Another good one is just because someone else says it's okay does not mean it is.

Photos from Finley Wildlife Refuge other than one from our pasture.

And don't bother telling me I think too much. I already know it.