The laws of empathy

(ES)

On January 8, 2011, the Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in a public ceremony in Tucson. In the attack, died of a gunshot Christina Green, a nine year old girl whose death shook U.S. society.

Days later, in a tribute to the victims, President Obama delivered a touching speech from which I extract some paragraphs in memory of the victims.

“We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -– but rather, how well we have loved -- and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.

And that process -- that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions –- that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.

For those who were harmed, those who were killed –- they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong. We may not have known them personally, but surely we see ourselves in them. In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis –- she’s our mom or our grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law.

And in Gabby -- in Gabby, we see a reflection of our public-spiritedness; that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christina -- in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic, so full of magic. So deserving of our love. And so deserving of our good example”

Empathy is defined as the cognitive ability to perceive in a common context what another individual may feel, in other words, the mental and emotional identification of a subject with the mood of another.

If I were to describe the laws that determine the degree of empathy, I would say that there are two mainly:

1. The degree of empathy from one individual to another is inversely proportional to the geographic distance that separates them. The further away from each other, less capacity for empathy.
2. The degree of empathy from one individual to another is directly proportional to the existence of a common context. The more experiences shared between both, more capacity for empathy.

This video from MSF of April 2011, contains the testimony of a victim of violence in Cote d'Ivoire which describes how soldiers have entered firing at his house and have killed a 5-year girl of several gunshot in the neck.



We don't know this girl's name nor we have her picture, but without knowing her, I also see in her all of our children. I can not imagine how her life would be, but I am convinced that she has parents and siblings who loved her and enjoyed her laughter and games, and comforted her when she cried. Her absence is a black abyss in their hearts and mine.

All victims of violence in Cote d'Ivoire are part of our family. No matter if we share with them a common context or not, or whether they are our neighbors or live thousands of miles away.

The girl killed vilely in Cote de I'voire has had no posthumous tribute, no president of any nation in his speech has recalled her.

Do not forget them. Neither she, nor Christina, or the thousands of children who die in any conflict, because to forget innocent victims is like die slowly with them.

Let our values be truly aligned with our actions.


TAKE ACTION:

Click on this link and send the post to the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations (france@franceonu.org). We have a responsibility to protect the people of Cote d'Ivoire.



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Can you hear them crying?

(ES)

Crying in children is a response to pain, fear, sadness, frustration, confusion, anger, inability to express their feelings appropriately. In babies, it becomes a powerful and effective way to get attention from their parents. When we hear our children crying at night, we wake up and rush to comfort them, to ease their pain or fear. The fear of imaginary monsters that wake them up in the midst of darkness, heart pounding, desperately seeking a few soothing words to the ear, a hug to give them security that let them having sweet dreams again.

In the global world we live in, we often see that the action in some remote part of the planet has a reaction to thousands of miles, as if the Law of Action and Reaction ruled our destinies, and accelerating the effect of opposing forces that propagate through space in the media. That is the explanation we received when a Protestant pastor from Gainesville (FL) burns a copy of Quran and cause the death of 12 people in Afghanistan during protests against this action. So we are also told how a high-risk lending transactions in the mortgage market in the U.S. cause a global economic crisis. The same explanation as a devastating fires in Russia have led to escalating prices of basic food to famine condemn millions of people on other continents. Similarly, facing natural disasters anywhere in the world, almost immediately, international humanitarian aid is organized.

Effects that persist and effects that expire. Immediate reaction and delayed reaction. Physical laws do not explain why human being does not venture into the darkness that is the crisis of values ​​in this global world and is delivered without further ado to give comfort to the millions of children who suffer in silence, facing daily real monsters such as hunger, abuse, rape, lack of opportunities, loneliness, labor exploitation, street violence, HIV, sexual exploitation or uprooting.

Are not our children? Does the globalization and its consequences only affect them in the negative? Can you hear the crying of the girls raped in Haiti or Congo or Darfur? Can you hear the crying of the girls sold and prostituted? Can you hear the crying of child soldiers? Can you hear the crying of children orphaned by HIV? Can you hear the crying of street children? Can you hear the crying of children working in slavery? Can you hear the crying of children who can not go to school? Can you hear the crying of millions of children who now go to bed with empty stomach?

Are not our children?

Hopefully we will wake up in this dark night we live to give comfort to the millions of children who cry, to ease their suffering and to return them their lost dreams.

Perverted systems

© Nancy Palus/IRIN

(ES)

When Alan Greenspan testified in October 2008 that was partially wrong when he opted for deregulation, and was astonished to see that the interest of lending institutions had not been to protect shareholder's equity, recognized that markets and their laws lack any moral and ethical principles capable of taking into account the consequences of their actions on workers and consumers from which they obtain their wealth. The lack of regulation led to a crisis that, far from being an opportunity for change to undo the excesses of those who caused it, has served, if anything even more, to give more power to markets and to increase the inequality gap in the distribution of wealth.

It is clear, history shows that there is no perfect system. There are systems that have demonstrated better tolerance over time, and serve as a model for societies who lack of it. All systems are imperfect, even in its imperfection, the worst of sins is precisely the trend to be perverted over time. Something in that way happens to two systems that survive long and that their perversion is precisely the confabulation and connivence between them. I refer to democracy and market economy.

We vote for our representatives to execute the will of the people, but they are the boards of large companies who express their will and direct the economic policies of our governments. Our representatives are democratically elected, while on the boards of multinational companies, people have no capacity to decide on its composition. The world powers, in their eagerness to control natural resources, manage at will the emerging and corrupted democracies in least developed countries that are resource providers, or maintain dictatorial governments that use them as pawns in their favor. All this with the double standard that allows them to be advocates of Human Rights while tolerate violations of them in countries that provide the resources they need. Under the guise of democracy, world powers out to conquer of raw materials in a protectionist manner of their conglomerates, while preventing any attempt of protectionism from other governments. The interests of the big banks are also safe, as their high-risk lending, their speculative dealings in food markets and public debt of democratically elected governments, we are paying it together. And this definitely has an almost immediate effect on the world's most vulnerable, which will be further pushed to the edge of poverty, this border once trespassed requires as a toll to waive any opportunity to re-cross it in the other direction. And who cross that border it is because the welfare of a few ones displaces millions, leading them to poverty and neglect.

The people's will is not to subdue to other peoples, plunder their resources, dividing nations, promoting conflicts, corrupting governments, violating human rights, impoverish the poor, condem to hunger for millions of children, nor take them out of school to work . If the wealth of a few ones depends on it, this is not the will of the people expressed their rulers, and since I can not believe that our rulers do not have understood the mandate that we made, I can only think of confabulation and connivence between governments and markets as a perverted system to maintain the statu quo of a few ones at the expense of millions.

If I'm part of the perverse gear of this system, I will not hesitate one moment to use the means at my disposal to fight for the unequivocal will of a more egalitarian world to be executed by legitimate representatives democratically elected.

Living without tags

(ES)

A man holds his child who has been wounded by an explosion in recent fighting, at an Outreach Therapeutic Centre Programmes (OTPs) on the edge of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping military base on April 3, 2010 in Mogadishu
© Siegfried Modola/IRIN



Intelligence could be defined as a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings.

This capability allows humans classify, sort and tag their thoughts, their memories, their knowledge, perceptions ... ultimately, their lives.
We tag everything; our lives and the world around us. We classify our photos, do lists of friends, we tag our memories, we share our lives with those who think alike.
The paradox of a diverse world increasingly global and interconnected is that we feel safer to belong to our little tribe, all with the same tags, and we are afraid of other tribes that differ because their labels are different from ours.

The sense of belonging is an inherent human need to the extent that we are social beings. The problem arises when the defense of the identity of the group turns to violence to other groups that are considered rivals. Today's world is increasingly polarized towards confrontation between different identities. I would even say that there is interest of world powers, in their zeal to control scarce natural resources, to produce such identity conflicts within the borders of less developed countries, to the extent that such conflicts inevitably delay the progress of these countries, which, in turn, are sources of much needed resources to rich countries.

If for a moment humanity was able to forget the tags, we will find that we have many more things in common with our peers than those that separate us. That has been, is and will be always the problem of tags, which in general do not let us focus on the essentials. And the essential is so general that very often goes unnoticed.

We are all equal.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Peacefully overcoming barriers

(ES)

The world we are living in is based on power relationships.

Throughout history, those who have power have discriminated those who are different and they have subjected them to their own benefit.

To allow and justify these despicable actions there have always been willing media to silence the unjustifiable, or propagandize to justify the unacceptable. There have always been governments with moral relativism enough to allow abuse or not as appropriate for the interests of powerful that keep them in power. Legislators and judges who draft and interpret laws with laxity enough for discrimination kept, and in their absence, violence against people subjected goes unpunished.

With the same violence that have acted the oppressors, the oppressed have replied. And in an unstoppable spiral over time, resentment of those who were oppressed, has become the violence against which they are now subjected.

Only a few exceptions to this rule, I would say that Universal, about the spiral of violence. Perhaps the most notable exception is precisely related to the most violent and widespread discrimination known by mankind for centuries. I mean, no doubt, discrimination based on gender.

We live in a world where half the population discriminates against the other half for being a woman. A world where three-quarters of women and girls experience physical or sexual violence over their lifetime.

However, the achievements of women on equal opportunities, rights and freedoms, have been achieved in a peaceful way through many years of struggle.

And during those years of struggle, have had to overcome all the barriers that were stood in their way imposed by the media, governments, legislators, judges and society in general.

Faced with such a execrable act of violence such as rape, we have heard arguments as detestable as that a woman or girl did not put up enough resistance, or that her appearance was provocative, or that there were no obvious signs of physical violence and therefore it is assumed that there was consent ... disgusting justifications for the unacceptable.

Faced with such a execrable act of violence such as rape, there are governments that do not put all the necessary intensity in the prevention of crime, the punishment for rapists and attention to victims. Rape is a weapon of war.

Faced with such a execrable act of violence such as rape, during the complaint and the trial, victims have to relive the horror of the memory and are criminalized for being raped.

Faced with such a execrable act of violence such as rape, women is stigmatized by society, and must confront to the trauma without any help.

According to the UN, more than 200,000 women have been raped since 1996 in DR Congo. Congolese women are fighting peacefully to break the silence and impunity surrounding sexual violence.

Fighting for Women's Rights is a struggle for everyone, and a clear sign of the society progress.

Empowering women is the guarantee of a peaceful future.




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Fleeing the violence. Pictures of a conflict.

(ES)

I do not see women wielding weapons in Abidjan. Only men.
I do not see women by the presidential candidates to negotiate a peaceful end, already impossible, to post-electoral conflict in Cote d’Ivoire. Only men.
I do not see women pillaging, raping, looting, killing civilians in Abidjan, Duekue, or Daloa ... Only men.

I see women who demonstrate peacefully for a presidential candidate.

AlJazeeraEnglish

I see women walking through the forest for weeks with their sons and daughters in tow.

Marzo 2011 © Gaël Turine / VU
I see women who are working daily to feed his family.

Marzo 2011 © Gaël Turine / VU

I see children who collect firewood and carry on their fragile bodies.

Marzo 2011 © Gaël Turine / VU

Marzo 2011 © Gaël Turine / VU

I see women with their families, crammed into tents in refugee camps.




I see women who care for sick children.

I see children who have left school.

Marzo 2011 © Gaël Turine / VU






According to the media, more than a million people have been displaced from Cote d’Ivoire to neighboring countries to escape violence. Of which it is estimated that half are minors.

Fleeing the violence!

A euphemism of western press to not describe a situation that hurts even without living it in person.

It would be more proper to say that fleeing from certain death to a death less likely, but more painful, slow and agonizing that is the death of hope.

The hope of reuniting with their families.
The hope of returning to their homes.
The hope that their children have a better future through education.
The hope to express their opinions freely.
The hope of having a healthy life.
The hope of a decent job.
The hope to live in peace.

Fleeing the violence!

Is not violence demonstrate peacefully and die defending their ideals?
Is not violence live for weeks in a forest exposed to that in a control of militia, women and girls could be raped?
Is not violence sleep outdoors in the woods without mosquito nets and that their sons and daughters could get malaria or other diseases?
Is not violence that their sons or daughters could die because they don't have access to health services?
Is not violence living in a refugee camp and leave their homes behind?
Is not violence that some brothers and sisters were living alone because they can't find their parents?
Is not violence that children can not go to school?
Is not violence expose their sons and daughters to be raped when they leave the camp to collect firewood?
Is not the worst of violence living without hope?

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