His head is broken and so is our brotherhood

He was clearly broken, any idiot could have seen that. But could we have all seen it? I don't really want to talk much on how inhumane the actions of the Naval shooter were. What he did was something far more removed from a human sense, or an animal sense from that matter. He killed simply to kill. He made no gain from it, and only created loss to others and himself. Not even an angry dog would do that, but a rabid one might.

What I'm saying here is that this man's brain was clearly broken. Things weren't working properly. The machine overheated and exploded. What's worse is that there were some that could see the metal turning red and the boilers going haywire. The problem was that individuals saw it and not groups. Had a means of communication, or much more a sense of brotherhood among ourselves as humans to be able to see a struggling brother who needed help. So yes the faults in the inhumanity are his but maybe we could have done something to.

The articles pint out how there had been points that we should have gotten hints. And then I clicked with something that Marx spoke of and that was the collective workers. We are the workers. And as workers we have to look out for each other. Marx would have frowned on society, he would have pointed out how we were too much of an individual based society that failed to look out for its fellow worker that had been injured and was not being taken care of. And in the process we lost more brothers and sisters.

I'm not saying that we are 100% to blame, but we do have a fault here too. And maybe there is a ray of hope here that as we show compassion for the lost ones, we will grow closer together and learn to use each other as a support system. Maybe, and this may sound too idealistic, we can progress toward a society that resembles a sports team. Where everyone may have their own duty to fulfill, but at the end of the day we see each other as team mates and not just another stranger.

On Syria

So we've been hearing about this tiny country in the middle east for the past two years now. It seemed as though we didn't care for it before. We didn't care for the fact that it had a dictator. We didn't care that it had no democracy. We simply wanted to keep it happy so it wouldn't become another Afghanistan where anti-american sentiment would grow and breed a new Al-Qaeda. And now we care for what actually happens in this country half way around the world. But why?

Well the answer may be found in ether Mandeville or Smith. I prefer to talk from what I think Smith might say. Mandeville in all his dickheadedness would probably say that we want to set America up to exploit what we can out of Syria, or make ourselves look good in front of the world, or keep from looking weak, or to just simply get it off our television screens because we don't want to hear about it. In other word we might get something out of it. Smith might say that we have empathy for the Syrian people. 

Maybe some of us are picturing what it might be like to live in a city where you can't cross a street without running risk of sniper fire. Maybe some of us can imagine ourselves as a ten year old holding his screaming little sister as the await another bombardment to pass. Maybe some of us imagine ourselves as the woman who had to carry her teenage son to a hospital with a sucking chest wound. Maybe some of us could see our faces in the corpse lying on the street, see the potential that could have been but is now dead. In other words, what if some of us are motivated by empathy to close this bloody book so that way a new, better story could be written for Syria?

As to what exactly we should do is the debate that is currently happening. I will not go into that. I only see it as we want to do something to help the innocent, the truly innocent people in Syria who are caught in a crossfire and can't get out. We see the suffering and with our imagination put ourselves as one of them, feel for them and therefore care for them. At least that's the way I hope we see it.

Depression and a ray of light

So I walked out of class Tuesday with a huge sense of depression. I got an interest in economics with the idea of trying to find a way to help those in need, particularly the poor. So with our readings into the fundamental motivations of human actions I have to say I was a little crushed to find that the arguments presented to us really both relied on the sense of human selfishness as the reason for doing good deeds.

The arguments varied in directness, with Mandeville being as straight forward as possible saying that humans only act if they can get something in return. Smith countered by trying to provide evidence for humanity by stating that humans sometimes do good for others by putting ourselves in others shoes. This still conflicts me because its still relies on self service as the mechanism for aiding others in need. It's like saying that if we didn't picture ourselves in that position, if we couldn't imagine the pain felt by others then we would not be able to feel empathy.

None the less, on my way back to my dorm I thought a little deeper on what Dr. Herron told me on that idea. He said that the very idea of putting ourselves in others shoes, of being willing to step out of ourselves was human. That the senseless and irrational action of being willing, and sometimes wanting to feel the pain of others erases the cold heart rationality o simple actions for return and instead presents the element of humanity.