Silliman & Sudan

Today, a great albeit limited class discussion of "Sentience & Sensibility" took place. I was very surprised by the sheer lack of attendance, considering how interesting it turned out to be. Based on the discussion, I will definitely read the remaining chapters of the book to catch up on what was hinted at by Silliman, but not covered in the class readings.

My own question, on the genocide in Sudan was given a good deal of class time to discuss. I asked whether or not deliberate and willful ignorance was responsible for the almost entire lack of humanitarian and commercial media attention for the crisis was one of the main reasons for the genocide and the overall refusal to take moral obligation for the problem and make steps to correct it.

The answer was, while not optimistic, sensible. It's too late, and while it's not preferrable by anyone, military force may be the only recourse left to us. The real question is how we as a world power, and the United Nations (along with the rest of the world) let the situation in Darfur to get to this critical mass. His examples about the Kosovo incident were especially interesting because from personal experience I've met refugees from that situation (my aunt took an entire family of them into one of her larger estates and set them up in one of the rental buildings for free for almost 6 months). It just brings home the fact that the only time things like this make the news is when it's far too late for a peaceful resolution. War makes headlines, not peace.

I'd have to agree with Silliman's suggestion to simply ignore and turn off commercial media. They're only connection to the news happens after it's already too late to fix the conflict.