Consciousness of a Nation
Warning: This post is the most difficult I have written to date, so it may- or not make fully sense, since I am not exactly sure what I am talking about, so bear with me…
I read an unfortunate report by the U.N. a couple of days ago. The report concluded that over 1 billion people are in starvation. An incomprehensible number to the pain of suffering of innocent souls. The report also stated that the U.N. was having a hard time getting aid due to the current (2009) economic climate.
This conclusion led me to think more about the concept of aid. What is aid? The formal (wiki) explanation is:
“…aid , also known as international aid, overseas aid, or foreign aid, especially in the United States) is a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another, given at least partly with the objective of benefiting the recipient country… ”
I find this description mono-contextual (hey – cool new word I just made up), since it only relates to the effects of aid, but not the reasoning behind it. I believe the reasoning of aid goes much deeper, darker then the initial explanation. The “civilized” world has been giving aid for centuries to what we like to describe as lesser developed countries. Countries that haven’t fully entered the post-industrial era and countries that are not able to sustain a life style like our own.
My initial thought was simple: “Aid is the act of covering guilt.” The guilt of the western world. The colonization. All the things that we did or didn’t do to the less “civilized” countries. Like back in the days when you could redeem yourself to God by paying the church money – same thought.
Now … assuming that there is some guilt associated to aid … could it be that we have inherited this guilt from previous generations … and if so … are we actually inheriting the guilt of the nation? I guess my thought really comes down to whether a nation has a consciousness or not. We see collective type of consciousness/intelligence in so many other systems – whether its the accumulative intelligence of an organization, swarm intelligence amongst ants and bees or all the knowledge transmitted through language, culture and so forth.
Yes … very deep! Hehehe.
What is aid?Are we trying to cover over the fact that the “civilized” world is using/exploiting less fortunate countries to uphold its standards? My theory is that “aid” is a social/cultural band-aid to cover the guilt of our people – of me and you. Aid is our way of making it legitimate to uphold and retain our life style – and there is … from a conceptual point of view … nothing wrong with that.
However my feverish thoughts went further then this … The next question was: “Aid has been around for centuries in the western world… so have we inherited the guilt from our ancestors – and if so … does that mean the nation has a consciousness?”
