The Philosopher’s Attic

Rwanda - but a name. Foreign, far off and yet it should be so close to our heart.

There are no words to express, no words to describe.

It’s not the horrors of a foreign country that should humble us. Nor the thousands of dead.

But our own ignorance, disillusionment and disregard.

14 years for uncountable souls tortured, lives lost and lies of a universal brotherhood of Nations exposed.

Our Western silence and forgetfulness kills again today. The memory of the dead innocent.

NB: I find it absolutely unbelievable that French or German media can’t seem to be bothered to issue more than one article on the 14 year commemoration of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. It leaves me angry and speechless. English speaking media seem to pick it up a bit more.

Twenty years of squatting in the city center of Geneva have been ended by a police ‘eviction’, but the general housing problems remain.

The city and the Police of Geneva cleared the oldest squat of the city. After almost twenty years of illegal use two properties on the Boulevard des Philosophes, the RHINO (”Retour des Habitants dans les Immeubles Non-Occupés” = Return of the residents into non-occupied houses) is no more. Geneva police started evicting to squat yesterday afternoon and all seemed to go well, until 6 pm. That’s when the riots started, the tear gas was launched and trash bins were burnt. The indignation of the people living in Rhino and the sympathiser that the city and the police started the eviction although a court hearing as to the status of the occupation (do the 20 years of occupation create a situation of tacit contract of rent or not?) still has not been decided and declared that it was only a matter of identity control. An identity control that excluded the pregnant women and the children. Everyone else was taken to the police station. Either way you phrase it, it was an eviction. Or don’t pregnant women need to have their identity ascertained?

While I am in no way hot for puerile anarchism, pot-induced socialist fantasies of a fairer world or the ‘free’ sub-cultural phenomenon of such places (cf. Rhino housed an independent cinema, a bar, restaurant and a concert stage), the squats in Geneva served a purpose.

Last year at the beginning of term, the University of Geneva announced that only 16% of all new students that were to begin their studies at the University would be lodged with the help of the University and the city. The remaining 84% would have to work something out on their own. The possible opportunities in Geneva are the following: shared housing, living outside of the city (Lausanne, France etc.) or live in a squat until you find an apartment.
In a city where your kitchen counts as a liveable room and where you easily pay 1000 SFR. for a dump simply because it’s a 3 room apartment (where the kitchen counts as a full room!), where the xenophobia of the natives is so harsh (if you’re a Swiss German you won’t get a place to stay easily, even if you advance one year of the rent) and where the living cost is as high as I’ve experienced it in Paris, RHINO had a purpose. And it had it’s fans. Over time Rhino had become the contrasting center of an otherwise posh, money-oriented city that sometimes does more to accommodate tourists and oil-rich investors from Russia and Arab countries than take steps towards a better integration of emigrants, and lesser fortunate citizens.
As a squat with a year long history, Rhino was favoured by a lot of people, city councils and artists alike. And Rhino served a vital function within the fragile situation of this city.

It allowed students to crash for a while starting their new university courses and looking for an apartment of their own with the help of the city and the university. I’ve rarely heard of people staying longer than a few months, a year at the most. The reason for this is simple: living with a communal bath and a communal kitchen with 5 to 10 people in a single flat, having to deal with the self proclaimed leaders of the squat that although sporting every platitude a “Anarchism for Dummies” could offer, relished in their own little power while other people (the tax payer) worked to pay for the electricity and the water the squats of the city (Rhino was an exception, since the squatters had a running contract for payment of charges for electricity and water, this is in contrast with the Squat de la Tour for instance) consumed illegally.

But Rhino had a reason here in Geneva. Even if it was to force the city and the surrounding communities to rethink their housing plans and constructions of new housing. It’s probably something that will never happen. And the announcement of the city to build several new housing complexes does nothing to settle my mind. 50% of these new apartments are luxury flats and won’t do anything to help young adults, young families or students with their eternal quest for a decent place to live here in the International Metropole Geneva. Capital of the UN and the Humanitarian Movement.

The joke would be full of sarcasm, if it wasn’t the sad truth.

Links:
Taux de vacance des logements à Genève : 0,19 % au 1 juin 2005
Nouveaux plans de logements à Genève
News Clipping (in English)
News Clipping Tribune de Geneve (in English)

Symbols have a huge meaning in our world. Most of our communication works on the basis of images and symbols. On the first look it has become so obvious to us that we might not even be aware of it, but symbols contribute a lot on how we shape our world view and on how we construct our reality. Symbolic acts can bring a nation together or destroy an opponent. But will a symbol be enough to awaken the worlds mind to one of the worst humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the modern world?

One of the best known symbols of the city of Geneva is the “Jet d’eau” a water fountain in the Lake Geneva that raises up to 140 meters into the air. As far as symbols go this is not anything of historical value. Even if the fountain has been operational since the 1890ies - which is slightly surprising - there is no mythology (think of the fountains of Versailles), no historical grand gesture (think of the train in the forest of Compiègne) to warrant such a symbol, no even an eminent death (think of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria). The “Jet d’Eau” was at its beginning a simple valve that was used to balance the system of the nearby power generator. But it somehow stuck with the city of Geneva and the lake which has a huge importance here.

Tonight however, this symbol will unite with another huge symbol here: the UN. As the ‘capital’ of the humanitarian movement, as the legal siege of the UN and all it’s humanitarian bureaus, the city of Geneva will illuminate its chief symbol - the Jet d’eau - tonight in blood red in order to waken people’s sensibility for the drama that is still being ignored: Darfur.

Like the first of the Makot Mitzrayim or the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the fountain of Geneva will seem as if it had turned into blood. The blood of over 200′000 people dead and over 2 Million cast away in abominable refugee camps in a lawless and ignored region.
The Jet d’eau, an icon made of water takes thus another meaning. That of one of the main reasons behind this one-sided conflict: water. Thus our lake, the Lake of Geneva, takes on the reason, meaning and the unnumbered voiceless cries of the victims of Darfur.

The icon of the water can be seen for miles around. And with the “Fête de Genève” around the corner, where the city attracts a lot of foreign guests, maybe there are people that will be touched this symbol. Maybe it will help us to ask some of the necessary questions that we dared not to ask up till now: Why have we let this crisis unfold unstopped for 3 years already? How can we all sing to the Life Earth tune, but will not raise our voices for those over 2 Million refugees that cannot? How many more corpses and displaced (Official Sudanese Speak for Darfur Refugees) people will it take for the West, the NATO and the UN to take real, military and humanitarian action?

The TRIAL Association here in Geneva has made a strong start with a strong symbol. And we all need to do our bit that this start will not simply stay symbolic.

In case someone has not yet come in contact with the number one polemic over here in Europe, here’s what I am talking about: Mohammed Cartoons. And for that matter a nice page that maybe helps to follow the line of thought I am about to point out: Mohammed Pictures throughout History.

As a believing, practising and rather conservative orientated Catholic, I am faced with several conflictual emotions and thoughts concerning this whole issue. What are the facts ? These cartoons were published by a Danish newspaper in September. Why are we having the downfall of this journalistic disaster (cartoons are not journalism) only now ? The same month the Hamas - a terrorist network and political unit whose first purpose still is the destruction of Israel - wins Palestinian elections ? The same month where the West is played into Cold-War games again by an unyielding Iran ?
The list could go on and on.
And what if all the indignation the Muslim world is feeling now, is the same that all Catholic or Christians felt and feel when Beneton had one of their geniuses design a PR gag using Christian symbols and scenes ? Any believing Christian (or Jew) had to learn to live with this kind of half hidden critic, sarcasm etc. in the modern world. You deal with it, you have to accept it, you can voice your anger against it and use all the possibilities a modern society and state gives you to ‘not accept’ it. But ask your governement to a) give the responsible the sack b) have all copies burnt or c) make a law against picturing religious symbols, persons or else ? That is not how our western world works wether we like it or not. It’s the downside of having a democracy, of having separated powers, of having the absolute freedom of speech and opinion, of having the liberty of movement and action. It lets you be as intolerant as you can be as a Catholic towards anybody else. But it also gives the liberty to any atheistic journalist to voice their jokes about religion in general and about the Islam in this special case. And even if I don’t like it, even if I think that there is a line… (showing Mohammed as a terrorist is like depicting Jesus as an 11th century crusader) … that there has to be a line somewhere, we’ll all have to accept this liberty. Every right and every freedom has a downside, a bad turnout for somebody else. It’s one of the most basic lessons of western civilisation. And one the Arab, Muslim and Eastern world and any unfree goverened population has to learn. They better learn it fast, or they will get quickly manipulated into a fifth column within the Western states.

This story somehow runs deeper than you’d expect…

Is it really just a question of ‘desertion is a crime’ ? Or is there more to it than meets the eye ? It could be just the reactions in this context that made me jump, since the topic has been brought up a while ago already. Yeah… I guess it’s the harsh ‘what he did was wrong, so no pity’ conclusion that bothered me.
Apart from the fact that it’s a simple non-sequitur error to state that XYZ did ABC, which is a crime, so he has forfeited the right to ask for sympathy or pity from his fellow humans.
There’s something shameful in the above situation and I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.
No matter what reasons the GI or any other GI in any other situation had or has to decide that desertion is better than anything he thinks awaits him in the near future, no matter how elaborate the rational reasoning might be (since the Vietnam war ‘psychological problems’ is a good way to make a cowardly decision noble in retrospective and earn your oppositions respect, even if they don’t approve what you did), it doesn’t make a desertion right. Let’s take the example of the textbook Vietnam GI, already full of doubts when shipped into the Theatre. He keeps his doubt, thinking that it’ll protect him from any atrocity, helps him to stay the human being he was before ever getting there. One day he can’t stand it and just wanders off. Desertion. In our post-Vietnam times, I am quite sure he would be considered a noble spirit that followed his doubts on the military and the cause. The crime suddenly becomes less terrible to us (the military officials wont agree). And why is that ? It’s circumstance.
But, why should this case be any better than the one GI who doesn’t have a noble reason. Only weariness, fear, alcohol, drugs maybe and desperation ?

Apart from the fact that nobody can with full authority state that somebody got what they deserved, how inhuman can you be to throw such a judgement around ? I am talking about inhuman as ‘not according to first human reactions’ such as pity, sympathy, shock… Is it the Christian talking in me or the Philosopher ? I have no idea… I tend to think both. Hard to tell.

But as a Philosopher defining what a hero is, and how the word is used, falls smack into my field. In the beginning of reasoning (Greek Academy) a hero was somebody who partook in the Universal Idea of ‘bravery’, most often it was linked with toughness, absence of fear, physical and psychological strength… and nobility. Somehow the notion of ‘hero’ is always linked with the just cause. The term of hero applied to a Nazi soldier somehow doesn’t fit, does it ?
But since political correctness has stripped all discourse of the terms ‘good’, ‘evil’ or ‘just war’, we’ve come more and more to a diverse stance towards a hero. A hero can be someone fighting for his rights without thought for his personal well being, it can be a soldier perhaps, or a fire-fighter rescuing somebody else at the expense of his own health. But let’s say that we’ve all settled for a circumstantial attribution of the term. A war veteran will most often reply that the heroes are the ones that didn’t leave the battlefield alive, and that nobody is just a hero because of some mystical calling he had. It’s circumstantial. You’re thrown into a situation where you’re challenged beyond your capabilities. Beyond your own possibilities. The ones that decide quickly enough, hard enough or clement enough and live up to the task or the situation get to be heroes.
John Mann who in a trench behind the little Dutch village of Son threw himself onto a grenade in order to save his squad was no doubt a hero. He sacrificed himself for his comrades. One dead is better than 6. All for liberty and the just cause.

And what about the ones that cannot make that decision ? What about the ones that cannot bear the responsibility of their own choices ? Deserters and Cowards ? Why are we so quick to judge them ? Again, a crime is a crime and no matter what reasoning is behind it, it stays a crime. I’m talking about the human judgement.

Isn’t it just more simpler to speak a quick judgement on someone who reminds us of our own doubts and deficiencies ? That someone could have been us… anywhere, any time ? Not having been in the situation, how can we be sure that we would have lived up to the task ? The argument is gratious, I know. But still, it’s a valuable one. It’s this argument that makes us different from an ‘inhuman’ dictatorship who doesn’t accept human weakness.

Accepting somebody else’s weakness makes us truly human. In the simply act of sympathy or pity in this problem, we remind ourselves of our own fears and doubts and our own limitations.
It doesn’t make a deserter a saint. But sitting in a warm room with a nice cup of tea, it’s the only reasoning that can be considered truly ‘human’… and being a simple philosopher and no soldier, the only one I’ll follow.

Ever asked yourself what if World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game…?

ROFL

My mind was tickled by this post over at WildBillGuarnere.com: Post about ‘The Downfall’

Of course, generally speaking everything tickles my mind… professional deformation I guess. But this part of the post got me interested in a more particular way (I hope Antonius Lucretius doesn’t mind me quoting it here):

“…It always struck me as odd and quite hypocritical to qualify as “inhuman” the horrors committed specifically by the species “homo sapiens sapiens”.
Extermination camps were “inhuman”?
I’ve never heard of elephants doing that, or tigers..
Only humans. (…)
However hard you try you’ll never be able to kick Adolf Hitler out of the human race. He was one of us.
And that is what’s scary. And that is why we must remain careful.”

Now, there lies an interesting question here: why do we qualify utterly disturbing things such as the murder of several million Jews or the Mother killing 8 of her babies by burying them alive within the span of 10 years, as ‘inhuman’?
Antonius L. - in the above quote - reads the ‘everyday’ expression of ‘inhuman’ as ‘not human’. The first thing that springs to mind as being ‘not human’ would be ‘animal’. And there of course he is quite right to state that the expression doesn’t make any sense since such ferocious behaviour (to be qualified with the adjective of ‘inhuman’) can rarely be observed in the animal world. Nevertheless: ‘not human’ does not immediately equal ‘animal’. ‘Not human’ - from a categorical point of view - means just that: not pertaining to the human species. The expression does not in any way imply a marker that would lead to the category of ‘animal. And if it would, the marker would be rather pointless, since the species ‘human’ is contained in the genus ‘animal’ (cf. primary word sense ‘animated’ or ‘having a soul’).
It is true however that common semantics and language has imposed this relation between the qualification ‘inhuman’ and it being ‘animal’. This doesn’t make it more correct from a philosophical point of view, be it language, logical or metaphysical philosophy.
But that’s not really the point I will be trying to make here. The historical view on ‘how come’ does not help us with the ‘why’ in this matter.
Why do we qualify the horrors committed by the Nazi Regime for example, as being ‘inhuman’?

I’ll try to keep this argument as simple as possible… well, simplicity is a philosopher’s main goal if he or she is trying to do earnest work and not steam off a whole load of fancy words without meaning. To keep it simple I’ll go back to the historical stance for a moment. Traditionally speaking the one attribute that distinguisishes mankind or the human species from other animated species is (according to the theories you’re reading or following) consciousness, rational thinking, language, reason and judgement.
[Traditionally because some of this has been and will have to be further revised by current research on the rationality of apes, practical problem solving of birds etc. But since I am by no means a specialist in this field I will not go into this here.]
If rationality is the main difference between human beings and animals for example, the difference between the two adjectives ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ can be summarized by the simple fact that humans think in a more or less ordered manner. (Meaning that the thought is not only triggered by environmental instincts.) Not only can a human being think about what he is doing or going to do, but he can also start to qualify and quantify his actions and possible consequences of these actions. Something that has yet not been observed in animals where the trial and error attitude is far more frequent. This is what you would call the ‘meta-level’.
This is only half an answer, but plainly put: we can think about ourselves and our actions. We have consideration and judgement.
The other half of a possible answer to the above stated question would be as follows. If we put aside the quarrel about free will, and simply state in a pragmatic way that it appears that we have a free will to choose between two courses of actions, then this ‘free will’ should ultimately be used in combination with our consideration and our ability to rational thought.
An SS officer who gets an order to kill 40 children that do not fit into a concentration camp for labour, is presented with a choice on several levels. On a general level he can choose between a human way and an inhuman way: think about his actions and thus choose the ‘human way’ or ignore any personal judgement or thought and blast away.
This is where morality chimes in. Recent research has lead to believe that the inner dialogue of rational thought about personal actions is the birth of any moral judgement or consideration. Let’s keep it simple and take this for granted like generations of thinkers (since Aristotle in fact) have.
Then the difference between ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ is the simple fact of choice based on moral judgement, which will not be a choice at all after the moral consideration has taken place of course. No moral judgement - however twisted the mindset may be - will point towards shooting 40 children.

In short: qualifying the horrors committed by human beings as being ‘inhuman’ simply means not to follow the disposition of the human species to thought, consideration and moral judgement.
This is where the second part of Antonius’ quote comes in: “However hard you try you’ll never be able to kick Adolf Hitler out of the human race. He was one of us. And that is what’s scary. And that is why we must remain careful.”
True, but what’s more scary is how simple it is not to follow rational thought or judgement against better knowledge. So, the path to follow is not just to be careful, but also to continuously reflect our choices and judge them.
Only by retaining the lessons of History and reflecting them, can we ever hope to not repeat them.