Thinking about a lot of things.
Thinking about the wiretap/privacy/security scandal.
Thinking about how
What, did we fix the Janjaweed?
Thinking about personal integrity and how much effort it takes to live a life that is honorable.
Thinking about the FPU scandal.
Thinking about the constant effort to scrub out the parts of your life that you wouldn't want broadcast.
I wonder if that's the central axiom of my morality- would you do this if other people were watching? Would you feel all right recommending someone else to do this?
I'd like my morals to be a little less dependant on my perceptions of other people...
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There was this PBS show I watched last night where women from
We couldn't complete this documentary because we all joined in the struggle to free this man's wife, and nobody wasted time holding a camera." The end.
I would have stood on the couch and cheered.
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5 comments:
heather and i watched that frontline special. very sad. i was glad to see the guy and his wife reunited @ the end. at that point, i would find the guy that sold her, and stomp his face into a curb. it disgusted, sadenned and frightened me. what was even crazier was when they said 70% know what they're getting into. now, i don't know about the number, but it's still crazy to think about anyone volunteering for the sex trade. but, it also shows the crap state the world is in.
as for your central axiom, that's good for you. unfortunately, it doesn't work on a larger scale. look @ the darfur situation. those guys don't care who sees, who knows. they will commit attrocities even if someone else watched. i guess that you're seeing this as well, looking @ your desire to be less dependant on the eyes of others.
as for the part of the documentary crew, it reminded me about something a prof told me once. (one semester, this chick lisa taught ceramics. she knew rob from texas tech, and was in between programs. anyway, she came and taught ceramics.) her brother had been involved in doing documentaries in africa. and so he was telling her about watching jackals, and their offspring and all this stuff. and you do it for so long, you make attachments. but, the animals are starving. or, another animal is going to kill one of the pups. and you could stop both from happening, and you want to, but that would compromise the "documentary" aspect.
anyway, i just kept thinking of that during the frontline. like, you're trying to just document what's going on. but you've got a chance to really help out as well. like the one girl who went back to the trade in hopes of making money for her brother's surgery. i just kept thinking, these guys have more than enough $, they could give her the money and the brother, now dead, could get surgery. nope, back to the trade for you. the crew dodged a bullet with the husband/wife situation because the pimp got spooked, and so they couldn't even attempt their "we got you on video" trap if they had agreed. but still, it did feel like they were saying, "we can't get involved because he might get hurt," but i was more feeling, "we can't get involved because we might get hurt or worse"
Did you remember when the woman with the sick brother volunteered to go back into the sex trade? I was really confused with that.
Also, I wonder if the pimp really "got spooked" or if the documentary crew somehow worked something behind the scenes-- they could scrape up a thousand or so easily and they had the pimp's phone number. Still, there was the scene where the crew was discussing journalistic integrity and why they weren't going to interfere. I was yelling at the TV-- "just do something! You have a responsibility as a human being!"
It's something that bothers me about modern journalism. Objectivism does not exist. I am much more in favor of truth over objectivity. I would much rather read an account of someone's experiences than a supposedly impartial recounting of the facts. I hate the pretense that journalists put up - that they're separate from the experience, that they're not a person, in a location, at an event.
I hope the film crew had something to do with Katia getting home. I hope their humanity won out over their "objectivity".
Heisenberg's Journalistic Uncertainty Principle:
That the mere act of observing and being present affects the objects being observed.
Or Hunter S Thompson too-- You're there, don't pretend to be some omniscient impassionate observer, just tell the story.
A little recipe for your "moral problems"
A Humanist Code of Ethics:
Do no harm to the earth, she is your mother.
Being is more important than having.
Never promote yourself at another's expense.
Hold life sacred; treat it with reverence.
Allow each person the digity of his or her labor.
Open your home to the wayfarer.
Be ready to receive your deepest dreams;
sometimes they are the speech of unblighted conscience.
Always make restitutions to the ones you have harmed.
Never think less of yourself than you are.
Never think that you are more than another.
Arthur Dobrin
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