Most of my thoughts after watching “Hotel Rwanda” have revolved around similar ideas I have mulled over in the past: issues of nonviolence, racism, media control, Iraq, and our current political situation in the World. It is important to note that I am a pacifist, and that despite my formal training in a violent yet disciplined art, I am against war of any kind. I don’t want to use this time to delve into a nonviolent approach to genocide, because there isn’t one. Nonviolence and peace studies would point at prevention of genocide ever occurring. Diplomacy, smart sanctions, negotiation, and mediation are all things that could have taken place prior to genocide. I feel it important to point out, that many reports point to the United States knowing about a possible genocide with hundreds of thousands of possible deaths months prior to the eruption of violence. For sure one can look at decades of conflict in Rwanda that led to the eventual uprising and extermination of a group of people. Nonviolence is rooted in Creativity, not fighting, posing, fleeing or submission. It is not passive, as many would argue, but an active force.
Many articles point to the truthfulness of the movie, the hotel really did exist, the phone calls were made, “white” folks were rescued by UN forces, and over 1200 refugees were spared due to personal contacts outside of Rwanda.
I’m going to take the liberty here of making a big leap in my argument, hoping that later it will be shown the connections. If we follow Jonathon Ruskin’s argument of power consisting of control over men, we can point to a power struggle in the case of Rwanda.
“It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money consists in its having power over human beings; that, without this power, large material possessions are useless, and to any person possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But power over human beings is attainable by other means than money. As I said a few pages back, the money power is always imperfect and doubtful; there are many things which cannot be retained by it. Many joys may be given to men which cannot be bought for gold, and many fidelities found in them which cannot be rewarded with it.
Trite enough, –the reader thinks. Yes: but it is not so trite– I wish it were, — that in this moral power, quite inscrutable and immeasurable though it may be, there is a monetary value just as real as that represented by more ponderous currencies. A man’s hand may be full of invisible gold, and the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another’s with a shower of bulliion. This invisible gold, also, does not necessarily diminish in spending. Political economists will do well some day to take heed of it, though they cannot take measure.” Unto This Last
Ruskin’s argument is very powerful indeed. However, he fails to point out that this “invisible gold,” this potential power we all have in the “wave” of our hand, can be used for moral reasons, or because of irrational and immoral motivations. I believe we have been mistakenly identifying economics and money as playing a major role in our current political dilemmas. Yes, money equals power. But I have come to believe that this power does not satisfy our world leaders. They all are wealthy, but recognize the real power is in “flesh.” The ability to control another person, or even better, multiple people, is where the power lies. Not control in the sense of authority, but control in an emotional, economical, political sense. It is a power control issue. Take the rest of Ruskin’s argument:
“…Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may even appear after some consideration, that the persons themselves are the wealth– that these pieces of gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them, are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures; but that if these same living creatures could be guided without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple– and not in Rock, but in Flesh– perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted creatures.”
Ruskin argues, and as a side note I tend to agree, that real wealth consists of empowering people, not in power over people. Setting aside the question of the natural state of humans, our current political dilemma misses the value of Ruskin’s argument.
Let’s look at the world’s failure to intervene in Rwanda. Beyond political conspiracies, power struggles, and the idea of a racist view of Africa, lets examine humanity’s failure to react. Video and photos were readily available during this genocide. If we look at the world today, the media bombards us with death, hunger, disasters, war, political strife, and disease every day. However, we as humanity fail to react. We walk away from “Hotel Rwanda” with tears in our eyes and sadness in our hearts, but these emotions do not stir us to react, or more importantly, to re-actions. At first I thought it was numbness. I thought our society has become so used to seeing pain and suffering that we cannot react anymore. But I have come to realize that our failure to change and act lies in only one fault, our belief that we cannot change the world. Individually we question what difference we can make in countries far away, or even in the lives of the homeless in our own neighborhoods. Individually we cannot accomplish much, but collectively we can accomplish all.
For in this separation of “poor and rich,” where envy is a direct result of power, and control over human beings is an entitlement on our minds and souls, to struggle, is to gain power and control over our dominion. When we no longer desire all America has to offer us, but struggle in order to demand all that America and our World is capable of, power is conceded by the few elitists, and regained by the masses. For what is the value of the dollar in your pocket, if I do not want it? As Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently claimed, it is not a struggle between violence and nonviolence, but “nonviolence and nonexistence.”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress…. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”
Frederick Douglass
