2005-09-12
Well, I'm Gonna Try It, Anyways.
Last night I went to see a lecture by Romeo Dallaire about the genocide in Rwanda. I wrote a blog about it today in myspace, if you're interested.
Anyways, in Rwanda in 1994 (I think) 800,000 people were murdered in 100 days. I was doing the math in my head and I calculated that that's 800 people a day, but then I calculated it with a calculator and found out that in fact that is 8,000 people every day. Murdered mostly by hand, not by bombs. Which made me wonder how many people were doing the killing. Equal amounts to the killed? Did 8,000 people kill one person per day for 100 days? 4,000 take on 2 per day? Or was it mostly binges wherein 20 people might kill 200 in a few hours?
Obviously it was a mix of things, but thinking about this really brought home one thing that Dallaire said. How this type of evil is so organized and so efficient, creating killing machines - be they gas chambers or children; and why is it that evil can be so methodical and effective, whereas good is wrapped up in bureaucracy and talk, bumbling and crying instead of getting its shit together and acting?
How did anyone organize a group of people in such a way that they were able to kill, one by one, 800,000 people in 100 days?
I was trying to imagine some scenario of good occurring at the same scale. It's kind of cheesy, but I was imagining how difficult it would be to organize enough people and have them actually carry out, the project of complimenting 800,000 strangers in 100 days.
I myself could probably wrangle up 100 people that I know, but could I convince them to approach and give a compliment to 80 strangers, every day, for 100 days? What about, maybe via friends of friends of friends, 1000 people. Would 1,000 people compliment 8 strangers each, every day, for 100 days? I doubt it. And complimenting is easy and shallow, takes 2 seconds, and totally makes a person's day.
Whereas hacking someone to bits with a machete is difficult, time-consuming, messy, and mentally taxing. Yet, those people managed to do it.
Forces of good? Bah. My ass. Maybe "good" means fucking lazy.
pansycline at 10:15 p.m.