How Will We Change an Attitude?

Edmund Burke

“ The only thing to allow for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

How do you teach people to forgive and not to hate? I just finished watching Tears of The Sun starring Bruce Willis. The story line is of a navy seal unit assigned to extract an American doctor from Nigeria since the rebel dictator murdered the democratically elected president and took over. She, of course, will not leave without some of the people she is caring for.

Watching the movie, I could not help but think of our own in Iraq and Afghanistan, apartheid from years past, even our own, on going battle with racism.

I think we have proven beyond any standard deviation that one nation, one culture, cannot transplant an ideal to another culture.

A culture can only come to a new way of doing things in their own time.

We cannot transplant democracy to Iraq.

We cannot walk in and tell people to stop hating another person because they are of a different religious faith, a different skin color, or a different language.

No amount of ammunition or force can change those things.

So, how is it that one person, or one nation can offer support to those ideals most conducive to peaceful, beneficial existence?

What do we offer for support for a people to protect themselves and their family, much less something as lofty as ideas?

Do we sell them weapons?

Give them weapons?

Do we educate them?

How do we teach them to grow beyond what they already are? To grow beyond where they are?

How does a culture change within itself?

What is that process?

It is a difficult question with no answer that is universal. Some of these things, we here in the US still struggle with intensely.

I do not think going in and solving problems for others really solves anything. People must learn to be self-sufficient. It is the same when raising a child, a pet, or a nation. Everyone has to have ownership of a culture, of a life.

Not to harken back to Biblical scripture, but, give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Even still, I think the man must be willing to learn.