The overwhelming majority of those who will read this have had a much better time of it lately than our human counterparts in Haiti or Afghanistan, to single out those among other struggling places. Such is our existence, and such is theirs, we might say; “life ain’t fair and the world is mean.” Still I believe it is our obligation—speaking to my fellow educated, free, and rich-by-global-standards westerners—to not turn a blind eye to the suffering of faraway strangers, even if it remains always our prerogative to do so. Looking away is easy, while looking on can be difficult in ways intellectual, moral, and emotional. I’m going to make the case that you should do so anyway.
Simply put, we should develop and maintain an appreciation of how lucky we have it, in many respects, and we should try to understand the reasons why different places—violence-ridden and under-developed places especially—are the way they are. Why are some nations or regions prosperous and others trapped in poverty? What accounts for the development of individual freedom and economic growth? How do highly-functioning institutions and governments differ from corrupt and low-performance ones?
These are all worthy questions. But before we can really even get going with answering them, we have to look squarely at what’s going on in places where people are suffering. And we have to empathize with those people.
This week, to me, that’s meant spending more time than I usually would reading stories about people in Afghanistan, in particular. Getting a feel for their circumstances and interior lives. Thinking about women and children and those who helped the American government there; how afraid many of these people are as Islamists (those who want a strict version of Islam imposed via government force) regain and consolidate control of the country.
You could be in their shoes. I think that’s a thought worth always keeping somewhere in your mind. If you were born into an out of the way mountain village in Central Asia, or an impoverished jungle town in Central America, or a war-torn area of Central Africa, your life would be very different. You could have been one of those thousands rushing onto the tarmac at the Kabul airport, so desperate to escape the advancing Taliban that you would be willing to cling to the outside of a departing jet airplane. You should try to imagine the horror of being stuck in that situation of near total desperation.
Obviously there are questions of metaphysics and religion involved in the thought experiment I’ve just recommended to you. Perhaps you believe all is appointed and ordained in advance by God or another force; in that case you might not believe that you could have ended up with a different life someplace else. You might think things are exactly as they’re supposed to be, and always would have been. And even from a secular philosophy point of view, if “you” had been born into very different linguistic, familial, and cultural circumstances, you would have come out different, and thus wouldn’t really be “you” in the sense that you are you today. Per that argument you are living the only life that you could have lived.
Go down those roads, if you want. But I’ll stick with my basic point. You could have it worse—much worse. And you can help to make some bad situations better. If you’re an American or European you live in a place where the actions and policies of your government have an outsized influence on events and developments elsewhere. You should own the responsibilities that come along with that, especially voting and participation in public life. The policymakers you choose—or choose to accept—make decisions that affect people in difficult circumstances the world over. I hope you take that responsibility seriously.
That said, our powers are of course limited. Some tragedies cannot be avoided or ameliorated. If you skipped the first link, let Sturgill Simpson tell you why. More seriously, some situations are really messy and some problems are intractable. America and our allies cannot fix all of them. But that does not excuse definite failures on our part, like the botched withdrawal and evacuation we’ve watched unfold in Afghanistan. Even if you think getting out soon was the right call, surely you can agree that this was not the best possible way to do so.
As we watch unfortunate current events play out on our screens, we must remember that they are not the latest streaming fictions. We are witnessing images of real life, and real people. There’s not much we can “do” about lots of it, immediately, but it all should inform our worldview, which we should strive constantly to refine and update. All other things being equal, better citizens and minds pick better leaders and strategies that lead to better decisions and outcomes.
Most of all in these difficult hours we must mind our humanity. Paying attention to the experiences of others is the foundation of empathy—it allows us to imagine what life is like for someone else. Indifference to others’ experiences, particularly when you are in a position to have some positive impact, is one key to cruelty. You know which one to choose. Just don’t let apathy get in your way.