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| A Larger View |
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A Bi-Monthly Newsletter of the Inner Outer Partnership |
| Volume III Edition 5 |
September/October |
2003 |
Accidents Do Happen:
Blame and Responsibility
Last July the whole world heard of an 86-year old Santa Monica retiree, who lost control of his car, killed 10 people including a 7-month old baby and injured some 40 others. Shortly after, a similar incident occurred in Florida where a 79-year old man hurt and injured several people. The Santa Monica district attorney announced he would decide whether or not to file criminal charges pending the result of an investigation. Still the mere notion of a possible criminal prosecution did not go unnoticed.
In the wake of the accident, the media, both print and broadcast ran several features about the dangers as well as the pros and cons of older drivers, peppering their accounts with real life stories, usually with the message that older drivers ought to relinquish their license.
It is true of course that age past a certain point impairs the acuity and reflexes needed for safe driving. But then again a new AAA study showed that although cell phones usage was responsible for a fair proportion of accidents, eating, and engaging in other activities while driving, something some 45% of the drivers studied did, was even more distracting and therefore likely to cause accidents. Clearly, safe driving is more involved in preventing accidents than how long we've been behind a wheel.
While age is decidedly a factor, and safe driving a must, the issue here is not age or safety, but blame. Something happens and we look for blame. We must blame someone. In our search for blame, equating it with cause and with understanding that cause, we tend to blind ourselves to the facts and to the true reasons behind a given situation. Sometimes, accidents are just that, accidents. They are not planned, they are not intended, and the accidental nature of the event ought to prominently feature in our grasp of the situation, lest our compassion fall under a handicap.
In the Santa Monica case, the number of casualties and victims can further blur our opportunity to understand. We must find a reason why a 7-month-old baby, a 3- year old child, a woman apparently down on her luck, or a loving couple lost their lives. These people were victims, no ifs or buts. They did lose their lives and their families and loved ones are now grieving and are likely to continue grieving for years to come.
We may think it unjust that these people died, but blame will not redress the injustice and pointing fingers will not alter the facts. There may be some for whom assigning blame will ease grief, or so they may believe. But relying on blame as a way to cope with pain is as unhealthy psychologically as it is spiritually, and these people need our help and understanding.
Survivors will no doubt file lawsuits against the driver and will probably prevail in some way. Is that justice? What does it say about us and about our society when we assume that monetary compensation is also meant to compensate for grief or for loss? It's harder perhaps, and too it may take us a long while to get there, but accepting facts as they are, accepting accidents and their consequences without blame is part of spiritual maturity.
This said, it does not absolve any of us, young or old from doing our utmost to be safe drivers, even if that means abstaining or turning in our license. And neither does it absolve any of us in an accident. At fault or not, there is the issue of responsibility. But responsibility is not blame.
The Meanest City and The Meanest State:
A Double Whammy
Las Vegas is the meanest city in the United States, so says the National Coalition for the Homeless in a report ranking American cities by how hospitable their laws are to the homeless. Communities were ranked according to criteria which included the number of anti-homeless laws, their enforcement, the severity of penalties as well as the general climate toward the homeless. San Francisco ranks second, New York City is third and Los Angeles, fourth. Not surprisingly, California, where several municipalities like Santa Monica, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles have recently passed laws against panhandling, sidewalk sleeping or makeshift encampments, comes up as the most inhospitable state.
The report found that in 89% of the communities they looked at, there was at least one law, such as perhaps sidewalk sleeping, that they considered hostile to homeless people. Donald Whitehead, the group's Executive Director explained that, "The degree of tolerance is decreasing, but it is a direct reflection on the numbers of people becoming homeless. The more people find themselves on the streets, the more the response is to vilify the homeless. It's also a response to the sagging economy. Communities have fewer resources to provide adequate supportive services."
If our society is to be brought up to more closely reflect spiritual principles, not only is homelessness an outrage, harassing the homeless is compounding our offense.
His Brother's Keeper?
It's not that William M. Bulger the President of the University of Massachusetts had to resign his post early in August, it's why. Bulger's brother is on the FBI's most wanted list and repeatedly he's been asked to give authorities whatever information he had about him. In June he testified on Capitol Hill informing the committee that he had talked to his brother over a year ago but had not discussed his whereabouts. But Mitch Romney, the Republican governor of the state, vowed when he took office last November to get rid of Bulger, a Democrat who for 18 years served as the president of the state senate. Romney was incensed that Bulger did not fully cooperate with the Federal investigation of his brother and kept calling for his removal on grounds that his lack of cooperation made him morally unfit to run the state's five campus university system.
Politics is politics and Mitch Romney's success proves his mastery of it, but the rest of us ought to see through the self-serving games to the real issues. Bulger has not broken any laws, and loving his brother is not a crime. Giving relevant information is not the same as sharing all of one's knowledge about a person-something that interrogators usually seek in case a piece of information can later be matched with that of another. However, pitting brother against brother is in this case too reminiscent of Whitewater independent prosecutor Ken Starr compelling Marcia Lewis, Monica Lewinsky's mother to testify against her daughter. Decency and love do matter. Once basic legal obligations have been met, as seems to be the case here, our right to exercise the deference and respect implied in loving those close to us ought to be factors before we can be forced to testify against our will.
Jobs Trumps Life of Crime
In Assam, in North Eastern India, people tend to be what their parents were. If your father was a farmer, you will be a farmer. Trouble was this applied to banditry too. Many became bandits because their fathers had been. That did not mean they liked it, but it was a way to bring in as much as $500 a month, a princely sum in that part of the world. The life of a bandit, however, is not easy. It meant stays in jail, sometimes for years, being always on the run, sleeping in different places to avoid capture, not seeing your children grow up, dealing with the threat and fear of death. So it was no wonder that the bandits grew tired of being bandits.
But no story about bandits would be complete without what happened to those who chase after them. The police in the area, who did not know the bandits were tired of being bandits, were themselves tired of chasing after them, for the more they chased the more they felt they were losing. As far as they could see, the number of bandits and the number of crimes seemed to be growing. Finally as a last resort they offered amnesty if the bandits renounced their life of crime.
When faced with new opportunities the bandits said, yes. They instead formed a cooperative which in India can be classified as an NGO (non-governmental organization) and thus qualify for state funds. They are now fishermen and farmers earning a fraction of their former take but glad to be settled. Contrary to what one would have thought, the villagers too are glad. They no longer have to worry about extortion, thievery, rape and the other crimes that plagued their lives. Guerrillas still exist in the area, but their aim is attacking the government, not the ordinary citizens the bandits preyed on.
Government authorities, the police as well as the villagers denounce poverty and the lack of education as causes for banditry, and the success of this group of bandits now turned into productive citizens proves their point.
Giving people a chance to turn around is not a phenomenon unique to a small corner of a developing nation. In East LA Father Gregory Boyle has become a hero with Homeboy Industries, a manufacturing complex, as a way to give jobs to gang members and turn them away from violence toward becoming productive citizens.
Such stories shouldn't be surprising, there is good in all of us, although for many it usually needs an opportunity to externalize itself.
Web Site of Interest: www.sweatx.net
Socially Conscious Clothes
SweatX, calling themselves socially conscious clothing, began in 2001 to demonstrate that high quality clothing can be made without sweatshop conditions. The organization works like a worker owned cooperative and pays its worker a living wage of $11 an hour. This means that the cost per T-shirt for example, goes from 3 to 39 cents, but SweatX believes that people are willing to pay a little more for clothes made without the horrors of sweatshop conditions.
They are a business, and one can of course buy online. But perhaps even more interesting is learning about the values behind the endeavor, as well as how the business began. After the sale of its ice cream plants, the Ben and Jerry board of directors was looking for investment opportunities. Thus Hot Fudge Investments came to sponsor SweatX.
Part of SweatX's strategy in creating a socially conscious yet profit making entity-although it hasn't yet made a profit-has been to forego traditional advertising campaigns and endorsements and rely on more non-traditional media, such as the Internet. And that only adds to their appeal, for the existence and reliance on the Internet not only sets them apart from past such ventures which didn't succeed but also makes it that much more likely that they will.
To Ponder On
"I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within."
Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam
A Larger View is published by the Inner\Outer Partnership, a tax-exempt educational organization addressing issues of higher values. We are funded through donations. Please send yours-as well as any comments-to P.O.Box 1293, Pac. Pal. CA 90272-1293. Also contact us by email at innerouter@earthlink.net or call 310-8367710 or visit our web site at www.innerouterpartnership.org
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