I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

Let me tell you what I believe in, and maybe you'll understand why I'll be gone in a few days, and why I'm taking it so seriously.

Each generation has several good things it can do for the world. The greatest good that a generation accomplishes will define it.

I believe that our generation has been set on the wrong path - that we are not out there to defeat the greatest evil in this world but instead the most obvious one... the one that scares us more and makes us feel less secure.

The word selfish should have been drilled out of my head by four years of Economics at Clemson. However, I do believe we are a selfish nation, and that has changed very little in the years I have been alive. I don't blame us for being this way... we've earned a lot of money, especially in the past 15 years. Why should we be bothered with the rest of the world when we are too busy discussion life-altering issues like abortion and presidential fellatio? I do not claim to be exempt from this quality.

But now this sleeping giant, this vast goliath of wealth and disinterest, sits up awake and alert and pretending to be focused. A single despicable and horrible act has welded our attention to the scourge of global terrorism. This is a black and white war. We are the good and they are the evil. However, this brings up one question: who was the white player before 9/11? Were we good or were we evil?

However, after one war that made a lot of sense and another war that made almost no sense, people finally began to calm down. Terrorist activity and recruitment has skyrocketed since we began our soon-to-be-renamed "War on Terror."

It is a war worth fighting, but unlike a war it can't be won by shooting people, and it never will truly be over. This is an important part of our lives, but it shouldn't define our generation.

When my grandchildren are being taught about our generation, I don't want us to be only known as generation that stood by while governments "fought the war on terror," a war that could have been much calmer had we been awake. A generation should not be known for retaliation in self-interest. We should be remembered for, as alliteration allows, our generations generosity.

The week of the London bombings there was a meeting known around the world as the G8 conference. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister that much of the world now has a strange love/hate relationship with, declared that addressing poverty in Africa would be the focus of the conference. For a brief, brief moment, American news station, lacking coverage of a shark attack or Michael Jackson case, began to give the conference some light conference. Then, suddenly, bombs went off in London, and global poverty took a back seat to rising paranoia.

Let me tell you what I believe. If you want moral absolutism, I'll give it to you: It is wrong to ignore a world that suffers the way it does. I know that it is easy to do, because they are far away and poor, and mostly black. They don't look like us, they don't talk like us, all they seem do is fight and have more children and spread hunger and disease. There are many in this country that would prefer to let these people drop off the face of the planet (believe me, I've met them).

However, when you rip away culture and skin and money, we are all brothers and sisters on this planet. National borders should not limit our concern for others.

Rather than reading news of another terror hydra head being split, wouldn't it be great if we did something really neat like save a few thousand children from malnutrition? What if we halved the infant mortality rate of Sub-Saharan Africa in 10 years? If you're concerned about abortion/child's rights, think about all the babies in the world that die between birth and their first birthday. Don't they earn any sort of priority? Would it surprise you that it doesn't take that much to keep a child alive for that first year?

Think about AIDS and how it is just ravaging a continent. Think about the fact that over a billion people live on less than $1 a day, PPP adjusted (purchasing power). Think about the millions of things that are wrong in this world that don't receive attention.

I'm not asking for anyone's attention or care. I've done that in previous blogs, but this time I'm just explaining my actions, not asking for an opinion to the contrary or sympathy. Without any sound structure, logic, or proper grounding, this is truly a rant off the top of my head.

I yearn for a day where someone asks me what my field is and the answer "Development" doesn't draw question marks out of their eyes. I yearn for a day where instead of gas prices, people start talking about genocide at the water cooler. I want a life where people are no longer so scared of the world, and instead are prepared to study and help it.

This is biggest fight I think we should fight, and it's a shame that the best place to learn how to fight it is overseas, and not here. We've lived in a world of terrorism for a long time, and we will continue to.

It is a fight we mustn’t forget about, but we have a chance to do something really and truly revolutionary, and we are the first generation that has the time, resources, and smarts to do something about it.

Song for the day: Rilo Kiley - So Long