For a culture whose majority religion talks a lot about salvation from sin, we Americans are not very good at "sorry," actually. Americans of light complexion get very defensive when confronted with the need to make up for what our ancestors did to African captives and to the peoples who were native to our continent. But perhaps this defensiveness is "just human nature"? Look at how Turks don't like to hear the word "genocide" about what somehow "happened to" the Armenians in their midst almost a hundred years ago. And the Japanese textbooks don't include certain facts about their last war, like the massacre of Nanking, China, or the 100-200,000 "comfort women" abducted from Korea and other countries as sexual slaves by Japanese troops.
In light of all the unrepentance in our world, it's rather astonishing, actually, that the German and Austrian public seem genuinely aghast about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jewish Europeans.
Cruelty. It's just part of life, so best get used to it, right? Other people should get used to it, that is. We who have the power and the comfort are getting used to calling it something else lest we feel morally responsible. So we tell each other that what's done is not "cruel"-it's probably "necessary" or "unavoidable." Or we point out cases where others do the same thing, as if that makes it OK.
When America's foreign and economic policies cause human suffering, mostly we blame the victims whenever we can, and when we can't, we blame them anyway or say it couldn't be helped. It was the fault of their government, or of some faction in their country, or of "the terrorists" (formerly "the communists"). Actually, if you listen to the news and read some blogs, you'd get the impression that some folks are just asking for trouble . . . because of their own stubborn attitudes (Palestinians) or refusal to get education or a job (the poor in the United States). So it's their own damn fault.
And when bombs fall on people's homes or Blackwater contractors shoot up their cars or they're left to rot in a stadium after Hurricane Katrina, it's an "accident." Failing all other excuses, we repeat, with former President Carter, that life just isn't fair.
How far we've come from the days when purer, or at least more experienced and wiser, souls spelled it out in international humanitarian law:
All parties are forbidden to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering
All parties are required to protect the vulnerable
In the United Nations building in New York City is displayed a poem written by Sa'adi Shirazi in 13th century Persia (Iran). The poem begins, "Children of Adam are members of one body." Sa'adi spent time among survivors of the Mongol invasion of the Middle East. His poem expresses a humanitarian consensus about which there really is no debate, the notion that empathy with others is what makes us human. Below are two of the 800-year-old poem's many translations:
The sons of Adam are limbs of each other,
Having been created of one essence.
When the calamity of time affects one limb,
The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
If thou hast no sympathy for the troubles of others
Thou art unworthy to be called by the name of a human.
Sa'adi
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