Natural disaster reveals human disaster

Yesterday I came across something I wrote about a year ago. It was a news piece I wrote from the Kenyon newspaper in response to the Haiti earthquakes last year. I ripped it off a couple articles I read, but it's not bad. And really, I rip everything I write off something else. If I could write it over, I'd do it differently, but it definitely took me back, and I thought it might be fun to share here:

About 20 years ago, an earthquake registering as 7.0 magnitude hit one of the richest cities in the most powerful country in the world. Just a week ago, another earthquake registering as 7.0 magnitude devastated the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, Calif., left 63 dead and an estimated 10,000 homeless. The 2010 Haiti earthquake in Port-au-Prince has, thus far, left 200,000 dead and an estimated 1.5 million homeless. The term "structural violence" explains the ways in which social structures put certain groups in harm's way. Some such social structures include racism, sexism, heterosexism and nationalism.

The disaster in Haiti was unavoidable, because technology to prevent earthquakes does not exist. The level of poverty at which most Haitians live, however, was certainly preventable. The infrastructure in Haiti was horrible even before the recent earthquakes and could have been mistaken for that of a country recovering from a crisis. Haiti has only two modern airports, while its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, has nine international airports. Only ten percent of the city dwellers and a paltry three percent of rural inhabitants have access to electricity. Roads in Haiti are notoriously unreliable; they have potholes large enough to be actual roads, so they are not capable of handling large construction vehicles such as trucks or bulldozers.

Now, after the earthquake, the situation is dire at best. Because of the lack of infrastructure, there are not enough medical supplies to go around. Even the simplest necessities such as routine antibiotics, rubbing alcohol and blankets are in high demand. Thousands of patients who need immediate medical attention are being ignored. The clinics set up for emergency care resemble war zones; surgeons are operating without anesthetics and using rusty hand saws sterilized with vodka. Dead bodies are being shoveled into dump trucks due to the public health risk of rotting corpses lying all over the city.

A non-profit called Partners In Health (PIH) has been right in the thick of the medical situation. Since many aid groups were located in Port-au-Prince, PIH's rural location made it uniquely able to respond to the earthquakes. The World Health Organization has put PIH alongside the Haitian Ministry of Health to take charge of the Public University Hospital because of its long history in Haiti. The PIH's current focus is a two-step plan to set up makeshift clinics in Port-au-Prince by moving in materials from PIH's rural facilities and to establish a supply chain through the Dominican Republic to bring in medical supplies from the U.S. PIH does not consider itself a charity group, but a collection of people who live within communities to build healthcare systems and promote solidarity.

Despite these unimaginable conditions, the spirit of the Haitian people, as always, is still alive. They have been through hurricanes, enslavement, colonial oppression, foreign army invasions and homegrown tyrants. According to doctors working on the ground, Port-au-Prince is empty. No police or United Nations forces are around to keep order, only regular people helping other people out. The co-founder of PIH, Paul Farmer, said, "The Haitian people have a lot to teach us about climbing out of hell."

In the face of such dismal circumstances, it is easy to feel helpless and act passively. There are, however, many things one can do. A first tangible step is simply to learn something about Haiti. It is difficult to expect to help anybody if you do not care or know anything about them. You could read the works of Edwidge Danticat, a 2009 MacArthur Genius grant recipient and is a novelist who specializes in the narratives of the Haitian daily life experience. One of her most well known books is Krik? Krak!, a collection of short stories that was a National Book Award nominee.

Abstractly, I would encourage you to start simply and consider the words of Gandhi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

from ken

PS - I have to add this in, have you heard anything about Haiti in the past 12 months? This is the world we live in.

1/29/11

http://www.kenyoncollegian.com/2.14787/support-haiti-relief-1.1925728#.TjSZqm-ktIc.email

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Pantheon Kenyon Commencement Speeches

I’m going to make a bold prediction. The last time you asked someone how they were doing, they told you one of these three things:

A) I’ve been busy.
B) I’m tired.
C) Both.

Thanks to the industrial revolution and the advent of iPhones, the modern world is dominated by multi-tasking and efficiency, which is great for mass producing TV’s and hot dogs, but it makes for a bunch of tired people. I figured the solution, of course, must be rest. So I posted a couple months back on wanting to get better at taking rest… and as you might expect, I’m still terrible at it.

The last few weeks, I’ve been super tired. The days in the lab have been longer, and nothing’s been working, so it leaves me drained and demoralized. The med school applications are piling up in my gmail inbox as I procrastinate further by writing this post instead. I also recently moved, so the packing and unpacking has been stressing me out. I know, I know, cry me a river, but really between all of it, I’ve been feeling like I have no time to myself.

When I’m tired like this, I just want to be lazy. I want to completely shut off and do nothing. But I think shutting off like that is a little bit like dying.

That’s what Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace argued. These are two men who became powerhouse novelists through their attempt to make sense of the word by writing. They philosophized about life on a pantheon level. And on top of that, they both gave commencement speeches at my alma matter, Kenyon College.

Franzen gave a commencement speech called, “Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts.” He argues that modern technology makes people passive. People would rather sit on facebook and follow their digital friends or watch porn than go out and form messy but real relationships. It's a hell of a lot easier to have virtual friends that never ask anything of you, ruin your plans, or make you look stupid.

Wallace spoke five years ago on a similar topic, explained via parable:

Two young fish are chatting along and swimming through the water, when an older fish swims past them, and asks them, “Howdy boys, how’s the water?” and continues on. Later, one of the two young fish asks the other, “What’s water?”

He was asking everybody in that Kenyon audience to turn their heads away from their iPads and pay attention to the world. He knew that the more you pay attention to the world, the more apparent it is that the world isn’t about serving your own personal needs.

I had a friend ask what he thought was the greatest problem facing the world. I think the world got confused about the meaning of the world. Everyone is convinced that the world revolves around them, but actually, when we die, the world goes on.

Franzen and Wallace both came to a similar conclusion: good things take work. Technology might have deceived us into thinking that we don't have to put work into relationships, but how satisfying is it to watch a funny TV show or a friend's blog post? I know I've never sat on my porch at the end of the day and thought to myself, "Damn, I watched some hilarious TV shows today."

I don’t mean we aren’t “working” enough, as in we aren’t filling out our days with impressive to do lists. I mean that society as a whole is not paying enough attention to the water around us. We’ve stopped appreciating our best friends, making small talk with our Trader Joe’s cashier, or looking out for that beautifully optimistic dandelion sprouting out between sidewalks.

It takes a hell of a lot of work to always pay attention, sometimes it hurts. I know when I when I’m having a bad day, I’d rather ignore everybody else and sulk away in my rotten mood.

But why turn inward?

Is it really easier to get through life if you turn off the surrounding sounds?

When did life become about comfort?

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

From the one who has been entrusted with much,

Sidenote to start: I struggled a lot with writing this post. Largely because it has a similar to tone to a previous post I wrote that I felt was too judgmental. However, I have a piece of paper taped to my door that says, “TODAY, BE TRUE TO YOURSELF.” I think this anger is a part of my voice, so I’m just going to trust, and let it come out…

Recently there was a foiled terrorist attack at a downtown Portland Christmas tree lighting. link I was talking with some friends about how he should be thrown in jail and never see the light of day. How could someone say they wanted to kill as many innocent children as possible?

One of the greatest thinkers of our time, Malcolm Gladwell, a columnist for The New Yorker, recently wrote a book called Outliers. In the book, Gladwell debunks the American myth of individual success being attributed to individual effort. Instead, he supports a societal perspective of success in which the privileged receive more opportunity for success, a theory called “The Matthew Effect,” named after a verse in the Gospel of Matthew:

“For unto everyone that has shall be given, and he shall have in abundance. But from him that has not shall be taken away even that which he has.”

I believe “The Matthew Effect” is real. I have a first hand recollection of it. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a suburban world, taught general rules of politely interacting with other human beings, and without being that motivated, I found myself binge drinking Keystone Lights while receiving a degree from a competitive liberal arts college.

At said liberal arts college, I encountered several incredible mentors: Coach Duane Gomez, Campus Minister Jeff Bergeson, and Professor Joan Slonczewski. They were all painstakingly patient with me and waited for me to come into my own, but also supported me when I wanted to push. In all three cases, they just randomly fell along my path.

In addition to outstanding mentors, at an impressionable stage, the people that fell into my life weren’t drug addicts or manipulative pimps, but a girl that opened my eyes to the global atrocities of the have’s and have-not’s, and slowly got me to think outside of my small selfish mind.

My story of individual success is due to this incredible environment. It gave me sufficient time to be coddled so I could develop into my own. Which begs the question? What did I do to deserve all this? And better yet, what did other late-bloomers do not to deserve this? That’s fucked up.

It’s easy to get guilt-tripped about falling ass backwards into success. Gladwell, a New York Times best-selling author who was also surrounded by a great developmental environment, says about his book, “Outliers wasn’t intended as an autobiography. But you could read it as an extended apology for my success.”

I don’t think guilt is the right response. I don’t think such opportunities exist in the world so we can feel bad about our success, apologize, and hide in our shadows. So what is the right response? Well, the Gospel of Luke has additional ideas about those privileged few.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

The Outliers framework suggests that society is responsible for individual success, but I want to extend the idea and claim that society is also responsible for individual failure.

I believe the failed terrorist attack in Portland was not an individual failure, but a societal one. This failure is not the responsibility of this poor 19 year old. It falls squarely on the shoulders of the society that puts violence, war, and power on a pedestal. It falls on the mentors that weren’t in place to teach him moral values. It falls on his peers that weren’t there to love him, and show him the incredible value of even a single human being. It falls on all of us.

It’s up to each individual to take what they like from the Gospel of Luke quote. But I believe for those privileged few in this messed up world, like it or not, we are the leaders of society. It is a lot to ask to fix the world. It’s super fucked up. But recently I’ve been hearing the stories of a lot of people who got the short-end of the society stick, and I think it’s our responsibility to capitalize on our opportunity and rectify societal failures.

"And Quenton Cassidy moved out into the second lane, the lane of high hopes, and ran out the rest of the life in him."

- John L. Parker, Once A Runner

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com