The people who live in the U.S. and similar countries have been brainwashed to some extent. Conditioned, at any rate. The whole concept of "all men are created equal" that permeates our culture has lead us to believe that, except for the pretty differences of our various cultures, all humans are fundamentally the same. That the only difference between a Mulsim and a Christian are the Burka, the language and the place of worship, or things to that effect. This just is not so. The differences are not merely trappings.
In North America and most of Western Europe we have come to think that urbane civilization is just about within reach. We value life very highly and believe that is a characteristic of most people. We often project the idea that this applies to the world as a whole and that if we only treat others in a civilized way, they will reciprocate. We still seem to believe this. We learned nothing from the nationalistic collapse of Yugoslavia. We flatly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah might actually have less than noble intent even in the face of ample evidence. When Muslim extremists chop off another head, it is not unusual for some people to justify this by pointing out Christian behavior during the inquisition as if actions 500 years ago in any way are indicative of western behavior today.
But these are old arguments. Today we have some new ones for how cultures differ in fundamentally different ways that speak directly to the value of human life. Not too many weeks ago we we worried about our pet food. It appears that some melamine made it's way in to gluten that was for use in manufacturing the foods. I imagine that most of use saw this as an issue of contamination... an accident or an anomaly like the Tylenol scare of a few decades ago. It is actually an indicator of that which I write. A fundamental difference how two cultures value life.
That gluten came from China. This is a country that maybe doesn't have the best controls on manufacturing quality. It turns out that it is not all than uncommon for melamine to be used as a filler in animal feeds there. Yep, you read that right. Melamine is a less expensive "substitute" for gluten. When you figure that out, and then figure out that we use gluten sourced from China for people food too, you quickly realize that there were a lot of panicked executives a few weeks ago. I can just imagine the conversations in the Lay's boardroom.
It seems that no contaminated gluten made into our food, just fido's. Hot on the heals of that catastrophe, though, comes new that the Chinese has another "substitute" used in food products, this time that has made it into people food, tragically. diethylene glycol, it turns out, is sufficiently similar to glycerin and sufficiently less expensive, to make it an attractive substitute. Diethylene glycol is similar to the stuff you put in your car's radiator and is a poison.
At least 100 children in Panama have fallen victim to this poison, recently, from consuming medicine prepared with what was supposed to be food grade glycerin shipped from China. Accidents can happen in this country. People do, in fact, make actuarial decisions about the value of life in this country. People do not make decisions that directly lead to guaranteed loss of life in this country, especially of children. That is a fundamental cultural difference and one that does not change overnight.
We live in an uncivilized world where life has vastly less value than we place on it. To think otherwise will certainly lead to calamity.
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13 comments:
You seem to be implying that the Chinese are unconcerned about public health or that this is a new problem...
I see no evidence that China made "decisions that directly lead to guaranteed loss of life"... It looks to me like they made economicly motivated decisions with limited understanding of the potential consequences...
The only difference I see between China today and the U.S. 50 years ago is time and a bazillion consumer protection programs...
Crimeny, we used to use asbestos for insulation and lead in our paint in the schools where our kids used to spend 1/4 of their lives... What were we thinking???
There's a reason China (and other "backward" countries) can offer lower costs for goods and services... or said another way, there's a reason Americans can't afford many of the goods and services produced in the good old U.S. of A..
It's all well and good to point a finger at China and say those guys aren't careful enough, but in the end, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We are victims of our own greed...
Here is a brief reminder of how mainland Chinese value human life.
I must be missing your point...
Are you suggesting that the Chinese government, in trying to insure that there are enough resources to provide adequate food, clothing, medical care, and other limited natural resources for their people, value human life less?
This strikes me as a government making tough choices in the best interest of the people... What am I missing?
Before I try to answer that, read this and tell me what you think about Best Buy, assuming it's true. I promise, it's germane.
OK, I read... Not clear how it's germane, but I'm guessing you'll fill me in...
In answer to your question: I don't particularly like Best Buy. They have only a slightly better return policy than CompUSA, who (as you know) I hate with a passion.
A friend of mine bought a Rolling Stones box set from Best Buy. It had something like 16 CDs for which he thought he was getting a great deal paying about $70. Then he got home and found out that several of the CDs actually only had one tune on them and most had less than three. All of the music included could have been sold on a single CD (maybe two), but they wanted to make the purchaser believe that they were getting more. When he went back to Best Buy to complain they informed him that their return policy forbids returns of music - even if the music packaging was an obvious scam.
I don't have a lot of respect for Best Buy.
On the other hand, I actually had a positive experience from Best Buy automatically signing me up for something. I needed to replace my CD player in my truck and found a AIWA deck that also played mp3 CD ROMs for about $140. I left my truck there for a few hours to get the deck installed. When I came back to pick up my truck, they told me that I had won a free mp3 player. I told them that I hadn't signed up for it... They had signed me up automatically. Thinking it was going to be one of those 64K cheapies, I almost didn't go back into the store to claim my prize. Imagine my surprise to find out that I had won a 20G iRiver worth more than twice the value of the deck I had just purchased!
But in general, I don't trust Best Buy, I don't like Best Buy, and I tend to avoid shopping at Best Buy.
Now... how is this germane?
I was actually hoping your comments would be in reference to Best Buy's behavior in the article. I should have been more specific...
The question I'd ask is, is Best Buy culpable for the behavior of it's employees when their policy explicitly forbids what their employee's are doing? Are they culpable when their incentive system encourages that sort of behavior even when their policy forbids it? Even if their employees were punished/fired if caught doing those nefarious things?
If it can be shown that Best Buy management was complicit or even promoted such behaviors, of course they should be culpable.
Frankly, Best Buy is probably only differentiated from other retailers in that they got caught. I think a lot of businesses exploit their customers on a routine basis. Maybe not so blatently as resorting to identity theft, but most of them will knowingly sell you a defective product or make deceptive claims about the capabilities of their products. Many businesses in the service and repair industry will knowingly replace non faulty components and charge for services not actually rendered. I can think of lots of examples from personal experience and I'm sure you can as well.
Note: I think there are companies out there with impeccable scruples. I'm hard pressed to name many... but I believe that they are out there.
So, hopefully this states my position sufficiently well that we can move forward and you can enlighten me on how Best Buy's business ethics relate to China's value of human life.
BTW, just to be clear, you don't have to convince me that the quality of life is different between China and the U.S.. You need to convince me it is sub par either by intent or through apathy.
In much the same way that Best Buy's management is complicit in their employee's behavior once they realize that their incentive plan promotes that very behavior, so the Chinese government was complicit in infanticide once they realized that their "one child per couple" policy combined with slow-to-change cultural values caused people to kill their female infants. Had they changed their policy once this was discovered, this would not be so, but they did not so it is.
Wow! That's some stretch. The Chinese government made a tough, but rational choice to contain a growing population issue. A minority of Chinese families then, due to cultural idiosyncrasies, choose the irrational behavior of aborting female fetuses and a much smaller minority choose to wait and commit infanticide. In this unfortunate outcome, you see complicity from the Chinese government.
One wonders how you would judge the situation if the Chinese government had decided to let the population continue to grow unchecked? Would this not be complicity in a greater disaster?
To make my point about your point in a better way: What would you have done differently if you were in charge? Would you have let the population grow unchecked? Do you have a smarter way to control population that would NOT have ultimately resulted in some minority of the population resorting to infanticide?
Funny, back in the discussion about gun control, you seemed willing to do anything it takes to prevent the violent murder of even one child.
The complicity comes from not reversing the decision once the horrible consequence was know. By using the phrase minority, you simply mean less than 50%, right? Or were you trying to imply that it was extremely rare (far less than .01%) and blown out of proportion? In 1997, the World Health Organization estimated that something like 50,000,000 women were "missing" due to the birth-rate control policy. That amounts to something like 5% of the entire population of China.
That said, it is not simply the government that seems to have differing morals, but the society as a whole, that such a significant fraction would consider infanticide a means for gender selection.
And, if you don't agree with the use of abortion for birth control, I'm sure you can imagine the very much higher rate of application of that technology for the purposes of gender selection.
After murder and abortion, the next least reprehensible thing the Chinese regularly do to account for "wrong-gendered" second children is abandonment. Something like 95% of the children in Chinese orphanages are girls.
In addition, there is historical precedent for the acceptability of infanticide for this purpose as a cultural tradition. This was documented in the late 1800's. This is not just a new reaction to the Government's policy.
Finally, the U.S., the U.K. and Amnesty International all have declared that China's policy contributes to the incidence of infanticide.
In this country, except in extremely rare cases, people never consider infanticide as a means to select gender. In this country, regardless of our other opinions on the matter, we are still largely appalled at the use of abortion for characteristic selection. Though, I fear, that is changing.
One last, mostly off topic, thing to worry about. Historically, countries with imbalances between eligible bachelors and available wives tend to be unstable and likely to go to war.
Funny, back in the discussion about gun control, you seemed willing to do anything it takes to prevent the violent murder of even one child.
Again, I ask what should the Chinese government have done differently?
The complicity comes from not reversing the decision once the horrible consequence was know.
But you point out that the problem has been around since the late 1800's, therefore it seems that this problem is not due to the policies that were implemented in the 1970's.
Also, India, in the 1950's recognized the need for population control. Rather than implement restrictive laws, they used education to encourage pre-emptive birth control. It reduced the rate of growth, but not enough to stop the population explosion. The rate of abortion in India is greater than that in China. AND, in fact, India is only number 10. In all of these societies it is the male that is selected for and it's always related to population control. So it seems that the linkage to government policies is tenuous. No doubt it contributes on some small level, but it does not seem to be a dominant factor, as you imply.
As long as we're singling out China, we should be clear about something. The abortion rates of China and the U.S. are nearly the same - about 28% and 25% respectively (based on a study conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute in 1999). I say nearly the same since the top 6 countries in the "abortion race" are two to three times that rate...
Let's assume, for the moment, that the predominant reason for aborting babies in China is gender selection... can you guess what the predominant reason is in the U.S.? If you guessed "convenience", then you guessed correctly. Which is more morally reprehensible?
In 1997, the World Health Organization estimated that something like 50,000,000 women were "missing" due to the birth-rate control policy. That amounts to something like 5% of the entire population of China.
Well, I couldn't find any supporting evidence for your statistics, but I did find this.
Let's do some math. The relative decline in female births can be calculated thusly:
(116-106)/(116+100) = 4.6 %
Since there's a limit-one-to-a-customer-rule in place, then I would say this is a relatively small percentage. It gets even smaller when you consider that these are recorded births, it does not take into account all of the unrecorded females that are born, but abandoned to orphanages. I can't find any data to back up this guess (mostly because I'm not really trying due to time constraints), but my guess that abandonment is probably a much greater chunk of this 4.6% than abortion or infanticide.
Perhaps you would agree with this since you pointed out:
Something like 95% of the children in Chinese orphanages are girls.
I didn't bother to check your facts since they are in perfect alignment with what I would guess. Also, I'm not suggesting that this is not also morally reprehensible.
Finally, the U.S., the U.K. and Amnesty International all have declared that China's policy contributes to the incidence of infanticide.
I wouldn't dispute this; only the magnitude of the problem and the magnitude of the contribution due to China's policies are in question.
In this country, except in extremely rare cases, people never consider infanticide as a means to select gender.
No, in this country, we have much nobler reasons: Over 60% of U.S. abortions are because the timing isn't ideal.
So, I guess ultimately I have to agree with your original premise, but not exactly for the reasons that you argue. The Chinese culture (like many over-populated cultures) has a propensity to practice abortion and infanticide as one means to control population. This is a practice that most of the western world finds indicative of de-valuing some human lives over the lives of others. Since the Chinese government is made up of people from the Chinese culture, we can assume that the government is somewhat sympathetic to these practices and is somewhat complicit in that it has not been effective at stopping the practice. I don't agree that changing their one-child-per-family policy would have any significant impact.
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