"A woman reacts as she stands at the site of an apartment building that was hit during Russian drone and missile strikes in Kyiv..." Photo credit Reuters, via The Guardian.
My heart just ached when I came across this photo of a young woman viewing damage to an apartment building in Ukraine. My first thought was that she probably has all her "stuff" up there - clothes, books, memorabilia, perhaps some valuables. Perhaps now she has to find a new place to live. And none of this is her fault. She's just trying to live her best life, and then this happens. It is heartbreaking. Wish I could help her.
One thing we could do is stop "hiring" leaders who orchestrate and fund proxy wars. I find Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer (many YouTube interviews) authoritative and convincing on the subject of American culpability in this mess--going back to the 90s.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this version of what happened in 2014 has never been available in the mainstream US media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lssvjQVlLk&t=794s
DeleteIt is highly ironic that the current American presidents insists that NATO membership for Ukraine is a big issue that should be abandoned, while it was another American president who pushed hard, over the objection of Europe, that Ukraine (and Georgia) should become NATO members.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/01/nato.georgia
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/whose-bright-idea-was-it-to-extend-nato-membership-to-ukraine/
Anyway, to answer your question: World Central Kitchen. That's what you are already doing.
Ukraine membership in NATO has long been a red line for Russia. Who has insisted otherwise, and why, is a long story. Suffice it to say, as long as Russia sees Ukrainian membership in NATO as existential threat (forever), Russia will remain at war to prevent it. Unlike most Americans, I find Russia's arguments on this subject to be sound, even as war is arguably indefensible.
DeleteI do find the focus of this post a bit odd. Hundreds of thousands of men, Ukrainians and Russians, have been killed and maimed--legs blown off, blinded, etc. Ukrainian men were forced to stay in the county while women were free to leave. It seems there's never proportionate attention to male suffering.
Unlike most Americans, I find Russia's arguments on this subject to be sound
DeleteIt may be understandable why Russia/Putin doesn't want NATO neighbors. But it already had a bunch with Norway, the Baltic states, Poland and now Finland. So there is proof that it is not an existential problem. Norway was a founding NATO member.
Furthermore, it's simply not their business. Countries have the right to associate with other countries as they see fit.
Meanwhile, Russia promised Ukraine territorial protection when Ukraine gave up its (old USSR) nukes - together with the US and the UK.
*It is Russia that violated this treaty*, proving that Ukraine needs more protections, not Russia. As if Chechnya wasn't proof enough.
And the US is trying very hard to forget the treaty ever existed.
So good luck ever trying to convince another country (hello Iran and Israel) to give up its nukes with promises of territorial protection.
tldr: It was Russia that attacked a neighbor, and notably a neighbor it had promised territorial protection for giving up its nukes and hence being a lower risk neighbor. So it is simply hypocritical to pretend Russia needs protection against its neighbors.
I do find the focus of this post a bit odd.
Your argument is basically that you shouldn't have empathy for this woman because there are other people suffering as well. That's an argument against empathy.
Empathy is not quantifiable nor finite.
I think it would be useful to better understand the history of NATO and Russia--and particularly the strategic significance of Ukraine. I highly recommend the work of both Sachs and Mearshemeir, as noted above. These are true scholars who unpack the history better than I can. (In a nutshell, the idea that it's "none of Russia's business" is untenable. I'm sure you are familiar with the Monroe Doctrine? The Cuban Missile Crisis? The notion that Russia should be the only country, and major power, with no say in what constitutes a neighboring or regional threat is naive at best. Russia has accommodated aggressive NATO expansion, since 1992, as would be unthinkable in any parallel activity in our own--the US's--sphere.)
DeleteI never said a word about not having empathy for the woman in the post. I'm addressing the gross imbalance in how we attend to the suffering this war has created. Probably 90% of the suffering has fallen on men. I would argue it's empathy for men that tends to be in short supply. Never that empathy is not important or essential.
PS: I don't see us, individually or collectively, as having an infinite capacity for empathy. If we had such a capacity, which strikes me as a magical assertion, we'd be able to take in all the suffering of the world and respond to all the suffering of the world. Since we can't do that, there must be some way of discriminating, which we employ consciously, or not. It appears to me that we are conditioned from childhood to put the importance of some suffering over the importance of other suffering. To let some in and keep most out. That is, beyond the sheer limits of our finite minds, there is also a kind of hierarchy of importance of suffering imposed during socialization; how we are instructed to deploy our limited capacity, in service of maintaining the status quo. We ought to be constantly questioning this construct. That is, given that in-group attention to suffering can only lead to in-group morality. Expanding our capacity to take in suffering and, at the same time, deconstructing the hierarchy we're conditioned to accept, is fundamental to moral work.
DeleteInteresting viewpoint. Related -
Deletehttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7560777/