What does the deafening silence of the biggest part of our media, politicians, and citizens about the massacres in Nigeria and the Central African Republic – that is in stark contrast to the reactions after the murders in Paris – reveal about us?
I am afraid nothing good…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-boko-haram-attacks-nigeria-baga-ignored-media
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I’ve been thinking along the same lines.
I do so agree with you. Horrible as the loss of life in Paris is, it is enclosed in so much that is comfortable for us as westerners, so many ideals that are in fact quite fuzzy (“freedom of speech”, “la republique”). The deaths in Nigeria and the Central African Republic, like the thousands that are killed in landslides and floods in parts of the world that are only names to us, just don’t have the same emotive value. It seems to be only when we can imagine these things happening to people like us that they touch us. The same is true, at least in Australia, of our attitudes to refugees.
I think that one of the wonderful things about good literature is that it can teach you more empathy towards people with whom you would usually not be in touch or about whom you would normally not think much. It is “easy” to feel sympathy with the victims in Paris when you are a European and Westerner. But we all travel in the same boat in this globalized world and what happens to people far away (geographically or mentally) should be also a concern of ours. And even when it is “only” about freedom of speech or media, we tend to have double standards…
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