August 27, 2007
ONE DROP RULE?:
Is happiness enough?: Is personal happiness enough when there is so much suffering in the world, or is it selfish to focus on the misfortune of strangers to the exclusion of loved ones (Clive James, 8/24/07, BBC Magazine)
Not long ago I was in New York on business and the weather was getting hot enough to make you walk on the east side of the avenues in the morning and the west side in the afternoons, so as to keep in the shadow. If you're anywhere near Central Park, it's the ideal weather for a take-out deli lunch.You don't have to eat fast food in America, because between every two fast-food emporia there's a deli full of good slow scoff. Armed with about 10 bucks worth of unimpeachable nutrition, I went into the park, sat on a rock, got started on my salad, and contemplated existence. I saw an old guy hobble past who was what I will be in about 10 years, if not 10 minutes. He looked happy and suddenly so was I.
For once I managed to hold back the thoughts of how few deli lunches had been eaten in Darfur that day, and I savoured the moment along with my slice of watermelon, which took me back to when I was kid in Australia. It was 60 years since I first had a slice of watermelon wrapped so far around my head that it chilled my ears.
That time, I hadn't questioned the legitimacy of my happiness, and I tried not to this time either. But I had to try, that was the difference.
I don't think it's true that the underdeveloped world starves because the developed world doesn't, but there's just no denying that you can't eat your fill without insulting a lot of people who have nothing to eat at all.
You find that out when you grow up. Finding that out is growing up. Life makes us melancholy, and the melancholy comes from the realisation that your moments of happiness are not only fleeting, but meaningless in the context of the sufferings of others.
Why? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 27, 2007 7:30 AM
Because feeling melancholy while stuffing your piehole is so much easier than actually *doing* something about people who are going hungry.
Like maybe spending five dollars on lunch and giving the other five to a soup kitchen?
Posted by: Chris B at August 27, 2007 10:04 AMFive dollars to a soup kitchen? How about doing something about the famines in Africa induced for political reasons, how about the subhuman conditions so many third world people try to survive in, ditto the slums in the world south of our border? My son-in-law just came back from Brazil where there are world-class slums reviling Calcutta.
By doing something, I don't mean sending do-gooders or foreign aid. I mean telling it like it is at U.N. and getting all those agencies with the high sounding names to earn their money or get out.
Our foreign aid needs to come with our people attached doing the on the spot assessments of what's needed and then bringing in the equipment to do it.
One thing this article got right is the New York deli. When we go to the Big Apple, we head straight to Wolf's on 57th Street and order a corned beef on rye w/horse radish mustard and pickles to curl your eyebrows.
Fancy restaurants. No thanks. New Yorkers know where the good stuff is.
Fantastic, OJ! This cuts right to the heart of everything... There are no lives unworth the living because life isn't a game where you add up the good stuff and subtract the bad stuff and then compare the result to what others have. The good stuff makes life worth living... that's all there is too it.
Posted by: Benny at August 27, 2007 12:13 PMyou can't eat your fill without insulting a lot of people who have nothing to eat at all.
That is hilarious. He can always starve himself in solidarity with the starving masses. He can send his meal money to a starving soul in a starving country ruled by a stuffed dictator who spent thousands of the starving people's money on a night in a New York hotel.
Posted by: ic at August 27, 2007 1:54 PMWhy didn't he just order rice from a Chinese take-out? 2 billion Asians can't be wrong.
Posted by: ratbert at August 27, 2007 4:54 PMIf you care enough, rise and strike. If you will not, by all means go, sell all that you have and give it to the poor and take up your cross. No one will stop you.
But whatever you do forget about the swine running the third world allowing you to achieve social justice by throwing away more money at them.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 27, 2007 5:52 PM