I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to attend a session held by a local anti-trafficking group, during which I heard the most wonderful speaker, Benjamin Santamaria. He spoke less about what his organization does, and more about the issue overall, and the culture under which this problem has been permitted to flourish.
Human trafficking is a terrible problem; it’s hard to know how many people are trafficked every year, but women and children are particularly vulnerable to trafficking for sex as well as domestic slavery. Victims generally are stolen or sold from less developed nations and taken to wealthy western countries for these purposes, or are held within their own country or a neighbouring country and used by wealthy westerners who come to less developed countries for the purposes of sex tourism. It seems a lot of trafficked persons have family situations that make them vulnerable, from extreme poverty to abuse to orphanism. These are often people that are vulnerable because nobody is looking for them; they are disappeared and nobody knows.
Ben talked a lot about white western culture as a culture of domination. [this particularly incensed the young woman I was attending the talk with, for typical white liberal “white people shouldn’t have to feel guilty for what our ancestors did” reasons, but that’s not really what I want to talk about just yet; please keep it in mind for later, however.] He spoke of “white is right” attitudes, about how white settlers on this continent felt they conquered the indigenous populations who were already here (they didn’t), and that gave them the right to [attempt to] obliterate indigenous culture, language, and spirituality, replacing them with the laws, language, and religion of the white homeland (didn’t do that, either, but not for lack of trying – for the indomitable spirit of indigenous peoples). He spoke about the continuation of those attitudes in the here and now, and the richness that is missed by shutting ourselves off from learning from other cultures. He spoke about a lack of sprituality the dominance of religion can bring. He spoke about the soullessness of capitalism, the attitude that everything can and should be commodified – even human beings, human lives.
but, while this is a large problem that takes place at a societal level, Ben was careful to offer a solution. He expressed that the solution of public policies and international treaties was important, but that the underlying attitudes of individual people are what will really matter most.
hold on.
We spend a lot of time here and on other forums talking about patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, capitalism as being overarching structures, a “culture not a conspiracy.” We say, “we’re not talking about YOU as an individual; we’re talking about your default position within relations of power that are larger than just you, don’t take it personally, try to see yourself and your position as one within the matrix.”
Well, it hit home to me, listening to Ben speak, that this is true, but it also isn’t the end of the story.
Going back to how the woman I was sitting with was infuriated by Ben’s slam against white culture. She was completely and utterly pissed off by this, ranted on afterward about how white people have a culture too, and it’s just as important as other cultures, and how other cultures can’t be so great really because after all, look at how they treat their women. [yup, seriously. this is a woman who has done a lot of international development work. just goes to show you, I guess…]
I felt none of that righteous anger toward him for saying such things. I was nodding along with him! I wasn’t offended by anything he said about white people at all! Why is that? I thought about it for a while. At first, I just felt like, “well, he’s not talking about ME.” Not in a pin-a-rose-on-my-nose, I’m-not-a-racist way, but more in a culture-not-conspiracy kind of way. but then, that wasn’t quite it, either.
What Ben was talking about was individual responsibility. He was talking about how these attitudes are ingrained in the fabric of our society, but that we are individually responsible to and capable of unravelling ourselves from that fabric. He described a lot of things that we could do, individually, to change how we felt and believed some of the underlying attitudes that make human trafficking possible, that make it possible for people to be bought and sold on a global marketplace and used like they mean nothing.
He spoke about spirituality – not religion, not dogma, but spirituality. Belief that everyone has a soul, a spirit, a spiritual life that needs nourishment, that needs fulfilment. He spoke about sexism, and how men must not force women to do or be what we don’t want to do or be, but allow us to develop into our own beings, support us, get the hell out of our way. He talked about the mistreatment of the animals we use, from labour to entertainment to food. He talked about racism, and the belief held so dear by so many that white culture is dominant because it is superior. He spoke about capitalism, the commodification of everything under the sun – the land, the water, the sun itself – and how screwed up that is, because the earth is for everyone, it can nourish all of us, and yet we scramble to get our little tiny piece of it all for ourselves. He spoke about not buying these things, not buying into the capitalism matrix, not buying goods from countries where humans are trafficked, not watching TV, not watching CNN.
And you know? yeah. I felt myself nodding, moved by this message. YES! We are, individually, responsible for the attitudes and beliefs that we hold. We can only, ourselves, change those attitudes and beliefs. And that is the difference. When we work to achieve attitudes of love for others, of spirituality, of equality, of harmony with the world around us – that is when the guilt fades, that is when the righteous anger dissipates.
I know I’m not perfect. I know that my placement within the social stratification system of this country, this culture, gives me unearned privileges that I can’t exactly back out of. But. I know that I am trying. I know that in my heart, I am moving from those negative, overarching, dominant and dominating atittudes, maybe a little everyday, as an individual person. And so, I know he wasn’t talking about ME.
I say this not to hold myself up as a shining example of light, or for congratulatory backslaps and praise. I say this because it clicked a little deeper for me that day.
We ARE individually responsible, within this culture of domination. We must be HELD individually responsible for atrocities that happen to others, because OUR ATTITUDES OF DOMINATION have led to, have supported, have made possible, those atrocities. It’s not about guilt. It’s about movement. It’s about change. It’s about evolution. It’s about revolution.
I have finally made the decision to become vegetarian. I have been flirting around with the idea for several years, since my teens, but I have always thought that becoming vegetarian would be something that would make my life more difficult, that it would be complicated. I have gone through phases of not eating certain things, red meat being a major one, but I have always ended up back in the realm of the carnivore. 
Thinking Girl 
faith
Posted in Controversial Commentary, Existential Crises & Epiphanies on January 7, 2006| 21 Comments »
well, by now if you've been reading my posts at all, you'll know that I'm not religious. I was raised in the baptist church, and at about age 14 I started to have serious doubts about the validity of what I was hearing each Sunday. After a couple more years, I wasn't going anymore even to appease my parents on a regular basis, and this past christmas was my first on record that I did not attend christmas eve service. I've had enough, and I don't want anything to do with it anymore.That said, I've been having some interesting discussions on the subject of faith lately with two different friends. I'll briefly outline the positions: one position is that faith is misplaced and misguided at best and it's a bit foolish to believe in something that shows such a poverty of evidence in its support. The other is that personal experiences of faith/divinity are important to an understanding of faith, and if we have no personal experience of faith, who are we to criticize others who have.
In my Philosophy of Religion class this week, the instructor made the claim that belief is not something you can choose, but that it is something within you that you discover. I was very resistent to this claim; for me, faith is exactly choosing to believe in something despite the fact that there is an absence of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. I don't think it is sensible to speak of believing in fact: it doesn't make sense to say, "I believe in gravity" or "I believe in World War II." I think belief is something that you can hold until you examine the evidence thoroughly, or that you can choose to hold despite negative or absent evidence. Yet, when I brough up the subject with my friend who holds faith to be important, she thought it made sense to talk about discovering one's faith within.
When I began to think about my own experience with faith, it is very difficult for me. I was indoctrinated into christianity at a young age, and it's hard to remember how I felt about what I was learning at the time. What I remember more accurately was coming out of faith in christianity. I began to become disillusioned with church and the teachings of the bible as I got older and began to think about the miracles, and heaven, and angels, and the immaculate conception, and the trinity, and I wanted more evidence, more explanation. No one could answer me satisfactorily. I began to think about how the bible came to be, and how the people in my church claimed god had written it, that the men who wrote down the words were divinely inspired. I began to think about that, and how it was at least possible that these men had faked it, or at least had been under some sort of delusion that made them think they were listening to god. on and on it went, until I finally began to think of the stories in the bible as plainly that: stories. good stories mind you, but stories nonetheless.
I began to look into other religions, and see if I found the claims there to be more tenable. I looked at judaism and islam, neither of which I found to be very appealing considering the position of women being no better than that of christianity, and the strong reliance on divine inspiration/miracles. no thanks – I need evidence to believe that sort of thing. so I turned instead to eastern religions. buddhism required too much suffering, and I like to think of the purpose of life to be to live with joy as much as possible. also, the pesky problem of the buddhist version of reincarnation was insurmountable for me: reincarnation presupposes a continuation of selfhood, which is in direct conflict with the buddhist teachings of no-self and impermanence.
the belief system I can come closest to believing is taoism. basically, in taoism the focus is on nature, and one's own natural tendancies. why fight what is in your nature? go with the flow of the tao. the quintessential taoist handbook is the Tao Te Ching, attributed to the taoist master Lao-Tzu. it's a lovely and inspiring book full of wisdom and enigma; for eg: 19 says "Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit, and there won't be any thieves. If these three aren't enough, just stay at the centre of the circle and let all things take their course." It doesn't ask us to make any leaps of faith, to believe in nonsensical stories that lack evidence, or to suspend common sense.
anyway, not that I'm advocating taoism, but my point is that I don't know what to think about this idea that belief is something you discover. I discovered that christianity wasn't for me, because it didn't resonate with me on an intellectual level. somehow, taoism resonates with me and I feel comfortable with it. does that mean I was always taoist and I didn't know it until I read the Tao Te Ching? Or that I was always an agnostic with atheist leanings and didn't know it until I discovered that because no monotheistic religion made sense to me?
what do you guys think – is belief something we come to intellectually, or is it something that resides in us somehow? And if it is something that is within us, does that beg the question of the existence of god? (how did that belief get there in the first place?)
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