WIM:
This type of logic, relating 'rights', 'duties' and 'responsibilities' to
each other, should also be at the core of the intellectual pattern of values
I would choose.
Hello Wim,
Is society progressing is hard to answer for me but think I would be
interested in exploring what responsiblity a leading nation should have in
sharing the wealth. I don't think there is a way to prevent people becoming
envious of the most prosperous nations but I do wonder if there is a way to
minimize this envy. (maybe your interest in dignity?) There was a show
discussing a this topic that I found interesting. Here is part of the
transcript.
POLITICALLY INCORRECT:
Transcript for Friday, March 1, 2002
Howie Mandel (America)
Betsy Hart (America)
Ian McKellen (England)
Shakara Ledard (Bahamas)
BILL: To raise awareness about how greedy, gluttonous and fat with consumption
we are.
You know how we're always complaining about what a ridiculous amount of
everything in America is in the hands of the richest 1% and how much we all
hate Ken Lay and his wife for being greedy and oblivious? Well, to the rest of
the world, America is the richest 1%, and we all are Ken Lay.
Which isn't really fair because we're not cheaters, and we do work hard for
our money and certainly should be able to enjoy it to a level of absolute
luxury.
But there's a line above even that some of us wanna go, and that's where that
"why do they hate us?" stuff really starts to kick in.
When the country with 5% of the world's population sucks up 30% of the
resources and only gives 0.5% of our worth in humanitarian aid to the people
who live above our oil and our diamonds and pick our food and make our
sneakers, you can see why there's a little resentment.
It looks like we'd rather waste than share when we turn overeating into a game
show.
A billion third-world people would probably fight to eat what a supermodel
throws up after lunch every day.
Howie: I think our national anthem should be changed from what it is to,
"Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah."
Betsy: Bill, excuse me for pointing this out, but you're full of baloney.
You know, people get so upset.
"Oh, we consume 25% of the world's resources." Guess what? We produce 30% of
the world's resources including things like medicine, technology, most of the
world's food.
The Internet was not invented in Bangladesh, and a cure for AIDS and breast
cancer is not gonna come from Rwanda.
Bill: But we don't share.
Betsy: Yes.
The things we export, just in terms of technology and knowledge, as well as
goods and services, are extraordinary.
I'm sick, frankly, of this whining from the third world that somehow we should
have to explain our prosperity and our hard work and our ingenuity.
We should be more like them.
Sure, we can live in caves and rub sticks together.
They should be more like us, Shakara.
Taiwan doesn't have any natural resources, but it has extraordinary wealth
because it has a relatively free economic and political system.
Cuba, however, has extraordinary natural resources and its people are starving
because of corrupt political systems.
When people change the political system --
And become more free market, they can be like us.
Shakara: But that doesn't change the fact that America is a gluttonous
country.
And being a foreigner myself, I actually can remove myself from the situation
and look as an outsider coming in.
Americans --
no offense to anyone here --
Sorry, guys.
But have --
they follow this rule of ignorance is bliss.
They don't wanna know what's going on in the rest of the world.
They're so self-absorbed about themselves and their country.
They're not interested unless it hits home.
Betsy: How dare you say that? There's no more generous country in the world
than the United States.
Shakara: How long has the war been going on in Afghanistan?
Betsy: I don't think that you're gonna walk home tonight.
I don't think anybody here is, and I don't think Bill's gonna cut his salary
in half --
because it's easy to say that somebody else is being gluttonous and
self-absorbed.
Howie: I think that America and --
Britain and Australia, that's the axis of gluttony.
Betsy: But they're also the axis of production.
Ian: Now, wait a minute.
You were talking about people whining because they were hungry and
disadvantaged.
Betsy: No, no, let me clarify.
Betsy: I'm whining because they say the United States is their problem, when
their own corrupt political systems are their problem.
Ian: And love thy neighbor as thyself.
hOwie: So you don't think we have to give another penny more? Or another
moment more?
Betsy: No, I'm not saying that at all.
Ian: Perhaps you don't go to third-world countries as often as I do.
But when you meet someone who's starving and who's asking for your help
face-to-face, love thy neighbor as thyself.
You cannot stop giving what you've got to help, and that's the natural
instinct.
You may want the problem to go away, but you want to help as an individual.
Why can't our governments, who represents us, take on that natural generosity
and give more of the gross national product to help our neighbors?
Betsy: But we do.
Bill: We don't give.
Wait a second.
We're the richest country in the world.
We give 0.5%, so how can you sit there with a straight face and tell us we're
generous? We're generous to people who we can relate to very directly.
To people who are out of the range of our vision, we are not generous.
Howie: We destroy crops before we give it away.
Betsy: What other country in the world, when it goes into a country like
Afghanistan to stop terrorism, which affects everybody --
Howie: You're right, we dropped Happy Meals.
Bill: When they brought that war home to us, we got involved.
Shakara: Exactly.
That's when we got involved.
Not a second before.
What about when the Africans were slaughtering each other? They were begging
for help.
America did not get involved.
They wanted nothing to do with it.
Betsy: We gave extraordinary amounts of money to Africa.
What about when it comes to countries like the Sudan that people, where you
have all kinds of slavery and horrible situations, the people that are
preventing that kind of greater generosities are actually black Americans in
Congress who don't wanna admit that there are some ugly black-on-black crimes
going on in countries like the Sudan? So there's all kinds of political
corruption that's going on, but that doesn't change the fact that the
Americans are the most generous people in the history of the world.
Our government gives extraordinary amounts of foreign aid, and we still have
people saying it's not enough when they won't change their own government.
Howie: Your numbers are probably compared to other countries that can't give.
But what we can give, we don't give.
At the end of a party, you probably throw your food in the garbage.
Ian: Do you really expect that someone living in a township outside Capetown
in Johannesburg to change their government overnight? They've done their best.
They've got rid of apartheid, no help from the United States, no help from the
United Kingdom, but they've done it.
They're starting.
How can you say they're whining because they look with mystery and envy that
America's so rich?
Bill: I would beg to differ.
There was some help from the United States and the United Kingdom.
They were kicked out of the U.N.
We boycotted South African products for years over here.
We did as we usually do, a little bit, and patted ourselves on the back for an
enormous job.
Ian: That instinct is a good one, and I can't see why you're so vociferously
saying that you've done enough.
When everyone --
Ian: --
Is to give as much as possible, surely.
Betsy: Absolutely.
We have a responsibility to be generous, and we are.
Ian: A responsibility to be generous, sure.
Bill: How can you call what we give generous? How can you call 0.5% of this
enormous wealth where people are stuffing food into other food, where we go to
warehouse stores and shop with forklifts, where we have enormous, huge plates
of food that no one could possibly eat --
Betsy: You know what? When you go to ABC and say, "Cut my salary in half so I
can give the remainder of it to these people that you're talking about," then
I'll take what you're saying a little more seriously.
People always wanna give other people's money.
IAN: And until you understand that there is a resentment and that you have a
responsibility, then the world's not going to get a better place.
bill: All right.
I did not want to let this week go by without talking a little about global
warming, because this was the warmest winter in over 100 years by 4.3 degrees.
The last warmest winter before that was last year.
A trend? Who's to say?
Ian: I've got news for you.
When the old government decided not to sign up to the Kyoto Agreement, which
was the world's trying to deal with the world's problem of pollution, 170
other countries signed up, and your country didn't.
Well, guess what? You'll have to think about who's right and who may be wrong
on that particular issue.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:57 BST