A friend of my brother's who has read my book has become my new best friend. She clearly has her eyes open more than I do. I doubt reading my book had much to do with that, but I'm glad that she has read my book and begun to direct me to certain things because I have a blog that some people read and so her passion can have a greater range. That's how awareness works: one person's awareness can make a second person aware, and then those two people might lead to four person's being aware, and then eight, and then sixteen, and so on; soon we have an army.
Anyway, this post isn't about how awareness works (technically, all my posts are about how important simple awareness is, since I really believe that simply being aware is indeed half the battle). This post is about the following video that Pamela, my new best friend and hero, pointed out to me:
Child Sex Tourism
Please watch the video. The video was enough to convince me to sign up for upworthy.com's daily e-mail. There's also a petition to sign at the end to help stop child sex tourism.
If you don't read on, that's fine, it means that you watched the video and then didn't have time for any more reading. Good! Watching the video and not reading more is better than not watching the video and reading more.
As I commented to Pamela, while watching the video I thought a lot about pornography in general. I feel more strongly than ever that my emphasis on pornography and its relationship to modern slavery is justified, because more strongly than ever I see that our attitudes towards pornography are the same attitudes that will later justify propagation of slavery and child sex tourism. One of the experts in the video talks about how men are sitting behind their computers in far-away countries virtually abusing the ten-year old Sweetie mentally and bodily, and then once they get off they also shut off the computer, go back to work and think nothing of what they've just done to a ten-year old girl. Is pornography not the same? We sit behind our computers or TV screens, directing the action (in the sense that we can choose and search out for whatever type of pornography we want), virtually using and abusing--a high percentage of pornography nowadays is about abuse--the bodies and minds of women and men, and then once we get off we shut off our computers and TVs and think nothing of what we've just done. Child sex tourism is obviously a far more cruel and heart-wrenching phenomenon, but do you see how our attitudes toward pornography can quickly escalate to child sex tourism? And then virtual child sex tourism can quickly escalate into face-to-face child sex tourism. And then face-to-face child sex tourism can turn into local child sex abuse/slavery.
At the bottom of all of this is an inability to see everyone as a child of God. When slavery in the thirteen colonies and the United States was at its height, slave-owners did not want their slaves to be educated in religion. Why? Because slave-owners, as heartless and/or ignorant as they may have been, knew that God probably didn't look kindly on enslaving fellow Christians: once someone accepted Christ as his/her savior, well, then that slave was... was... was a real person! Oh my goodness! We can't enslave real people! I don't mean to say that we all need to be religious or that we need to educate slaves in religion. Since post-modernity began its reign, I'm not sure that being religious would save a slave in the worldly sense. I am saying that we all need to see all other people as children of God. We don't need to be religious or even believe in God ourselves to do that. All we need is a sense that if a person is alive, then they are just like us, a real, live person. When we allow pornography into our lives or into our society, we acknowledge in some small way that not all people are equal. In that case, some people are worth physically or virtually taking advantage of, worth using and abusing.
Even if we aren't talking about pornography, there are far too many of us going around thinking that only people of the same or higher social status as ourselves are real people. There are others of us who go around thinking that only our friends are real people. Stop for a second and consider whether you are one of those people who don't truly believe that all persons are indeed persons. If we think about the way we and our acquaintances talk and think, we will find that we are often or come close to being someone who doesn't view all persons as persons. And that is our problem. There's far too much devaluing of real, human persons going on.
Want to end child sex tourism? Want to end slavery? Then evangelize. Whoa, that's a scary word. It shouldn't be scary, though, when we are evangelizing to the radical yet not-so-radical idea that all persons are actually persons. If we do that, then no one will be able to use and abuse another human being and then continue on with their life as if nothing happened. We are all children of God, after all.
Showing posts with label child sex slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child sex slavery. Show all posts
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Friday, July 13, 2012
Joe Paterno
Until yesterday Joe Paterno, Penn State, and Jerry Sandusky were old news in a way. A verdict has been reached that will essentially put Sandusky behind bars for life, though various lawyer-stuff will continue for years to come certainly. Yesterday, however, former FBI-director Freeh released and commented on his report on the independent investigation into the handling of the situation by Penn State officials. Basically the report damns everyone: the President, Vice-President, athletic director, McQueary, and Joe Paterno.
Joe Paterno is more than famous, he's a legend. Now that there exists a 250ish page report detailing the failures of Paterno and the others all hope that Paterno's legend would escape mostly unscathed has been erased. Almost certainly now Penn State will need to begin the process of disassociation and perhaps take down the statue of Paterno on campus. At least, that's what most commentators are concluding and encouraging.
To me, there are two upsetting parts to this story that are relevant to the fight against human trafficking. First of all, the fact that someone can have desires involving children is horrifying. I can understand it in Greek culture where an older man tutored a young boy alone for hours with hardly any life apart from one another. We don't have anything like that today. We need to think long and hard about how in the world that type of desire blooms in today's world. More importantly, we have to acknowledge that there are more people with those types of desires than we might think. And even more importantly, the instinct to cover up is indeed strong in many places for many reasons. What that means is that we have to work harder at looking with our eyes and really seeing what's going on in the world around us, we cannot float through life thinking all is well simply because no one runs up to us yelling, "I'm a slave! Help!" If Joe Paterno is the great guy that many still want to think of him as, then we must realize that even the best and most well-intentioned people can suffer from the instinct to cover up, and perhaps be involved in, the worst of crimes. And, of course, this particular crime and desire are what fuel child sex slavery.
The first part of the story is more obvious. The second part of the story, however, doesn't seem to be acknowledged much: we should not stand in outrage that Paterno could have done what he did. I don't intend to defend Paterno's image or anything associated with him. All I know is that if we continue screaming or sighing, "How could he have not done more?" then we are avoiding the question that most tugs at us. Indeed, when we focus on Paterno and not realize that others are just as responsible, or when we realize that others are just as responsible but only talk about Paterno, we are purposely funneling our anger. Why would we want to funnel our anger onto one person? We are outraged with Joe Paterno so thoroughly because we like to take down people in the spotlight so that we can think we are better people, that we'd do something different in his position. We don't want to think about the communal nature of this crime or the communal nature of slavery, by which I mean that a whole lot of people participated and participate and not one does the dirty work of exposure, because then we might think about how human nature can be rather disgusting.
Fact is that we are all human. Again, I'm not defending or justifying Paterno's actions, but I'm asking us to really and actually question ourselves. Are we any different than Paterno at heart? If he is a good person as many people say, then what might lead him to do something we hope we don't repeat? That is, what might lead us, if we think of ourselves as good people, to participate in a crime like that? Indeed, outrage with Paterno and other figures who splash into the limelight through bad deeds often allows us to forget the unfortunate characteristics and activities that we already engage in.
News like we have from Freeh and Penn State should not lead to outrage, it should lead to self-reflection. No matter how angry we get, if we don't inspect ourselves closely then evils like child molestation, child slavery, child sex slavery, and slavery in general will all continue. We need to promote the act of self-reflection rather than public outrage, which unfortunately only shoves those in the dark deeper into the dark to avoid exposure and intensifies the underground torturous quality of slavery. Compassion might be worthwhile, but for now I'm not talking about compassion: I just encourage us to reflect on our own selves and, hopefully, by doing so we will bring about a better, healthier society one heart and soul at a time.
Joe Paterno is more than famous, he's a legend. Now that there exists a 250ish page report detailing the failures of Paterno and the others all hope that Paterno's legend would escape mostly unscathed has been erased. Almost certainly now Penn State will need to begin the process of disassociation and perhaps take down the statue of Paterno on campus. At least, that's what most commentators are concluding and encouraging.
To me, there are two upsetting parts to this story that are relevant to the fight against human trafficking. First of all, the fact that someone can have desires involving children is horrifying. I can understand it in Greek culture where an older man tutored a young boy alone for hours with hardly any life apart from one another. We don't have anything like that today. We need to think long and hard about how in the world that type of desire blooms in today's world. More importantly, we have to acknowledge that there are more people with those types of desires than we might think. And even more importantly, the instinct to cover up is indeed strong in many places for many reasons. What that means is that we have to work harder at looking with our eyes and really seeing what's going on in the world around us, we cannot float through life thinking all is well simply because no one runs up to us yelling, "I'm a slave! Help!" If Joe Paterno is the great guy that many still want to think of him as, then we must realize that even the best and most well-intentioned people can suffer from the instinct to cover up, and perhaps be involved in, the worst of crimes. And, of course, this particular crime and desire are what fuel child sex slavery.
The first part of the story is more obvious. The second part of the story, however, doesn't seem to be acknowledged much: we should not stand in outrage that Paterno could have done what he did. I don't intend to defend Paterno's image or anything associated with him. All I know is that if we continue screaming or sighing, "How could he have not done more?" then we are avoiding the question that most tugs at us. Indeed, when we focus on Paterno and not realize that others are just as responsible, or when we realize that others are just as responsible but only talk about Paterno, we are purposely funneling our anger. Why would we want to funnel our anger onto one person? We are outraged with Joe Paterno so thoroughly because we like to take down people in the spotlight so that we can think we are better people, that we'd do something different in his position. We don't want to think about the communal nature of this crime or the communal nature of slavery, by which I mean that a whole lot of people participated and participate and not one does the dirty work of exposure, because then we might think about how human nature can be rather disgusting.
Fact is that we are all human. Again, I'm not defending or justifying Paterno's actions, but I'm asking us to really and actually question ourselves. Are we any different than Paterno at heart? If he is a good person as many people say, then what might lead him to do something we hope we don't repeat? That is, what might lead us, if we think of ourselves as good people, to participate in a crime like that? Indeed, outrage with Paterno and other figures who splash into the limelight through bad deeds often allows us to forget the unfortunate characteristics and activities that we already engage in.
News like we have from Freeh and Penn State should not lead to outrage, it should lead to self-reflection. No matter how angry we get, if we don't inspect ourselves closely then evils like child molestation, child slavery, child sex slavery, and slavery in general will all continue. We need to promote the act of self-reflection rather than public outrage, which unfortunately only shoves those in the dark deeper into the dark to avoid exposure and intensifies the underground torturous quality of slavery. Compassion might be worthwhile, but for now I'm not talking about compassion: I just encourage us to reflect on our own selves and, hopefully, by doing so we will bring about a better, healthier society one heart and soul at a time.
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