The HK disaster relief: Another Exercise in Hypocrisy

One thing about studying in the Arts and Social Sciences in university, or maybe just any area of post-secondary education in general, is that we develop the ability to spot hypocrisy, everywhere. It is my personal belief that one of the objectives university students should strive for is to overcome the gross cynicism that today’s society emulates, and not necessarily become an optimist, just not a ‘hater’.

Yet, here is another example of which I can’t help but to highlight because arguably, this is the kind of hypocrisy that is most detrimental towards the way we live.

In light of the tragedies brought about as a result of the natural disasters in Taiwan, the Hong Kong government, along with several other Hong Kong fundraisers (many involving celebrities), has donated HKD$50+ million to the Taiwanese in aid.

This was the disaster: Typhoon Morakot, which formed in August 2 and dissipated 9 days later, was the deadliest typhoon to hit Taiwan in recorded history. In a matter of days, several districts received more rainfall than the previous year combined. The death toll thus far stands at 153 with over 400 people still missing. Landslide flooded entire villages, and agricultural destruction amounted to billions of dollars in loses. The storm also left over 25000 homes without electricity, and hundreds of millions of dollars of tourism loss.

And amidst of all this, amidst all the atrocities mother nature has bestowed upon the Taiwanese, the biggest solution the Hong Kong people could think of is… drum roll please…

Money.

Really, that’s the best solution they came up with. In the days and weeks following the typhoon, we witness what could only be said as the typical media hype and attention to any disaster. As usual, there were big televised events, featuring all of the Hong Kong celebrities you could possibly name, and some politicians too (probably there just to take pictures with the celebs). The actors would give lengthy introductions to singers, who would sing songs as a scroll on the bottom of the screen appears showing the names of the donors and the amounts they have donated.

Before we go any further, I need to say something about that scroll. I do not know how it came about or where it was first used, but this essentially is the worst possible mentality in donating humanitarian aid. Sure, the total amount donated might be worthy of note, but why do we need to know the names of the donors, and moreover, the amounts that they have donated? Does it make a difference if Jim donates a thousand dollars more than Jane? What does it tell the audience when they see the scroll, that we ought to give more credit to Jim because he donated more than Jane? The answer to this last question should be obvious enough, but apparently, it’s not, because we live in such a materialistic world that we think more money equals better.

This is basically a snippet of the larger issue I am tackling: The Hong Kong people’s mentality seems to be ‘dump money on the problem and it will fix itself.’ As if this isn’t a bad enough mindset, it only tells half the story, the second being ‘dump money on the problem so we can feel good about ourselves’.

This isn’t just an issue of the inability of the Hong Kong people to think of ways provide aid in forms other than money, it is also speaks towards a larger issue of morality and applied ethics that is virtually non-existent in a capitalist metropolis like Hong Kong.

This discussion isn’t even philosophy 101; it’s basically talking about the most fundamental instincts of what’s right and what’s wrong. Often times, we have to worry about what the nihilists have to say about the non-existence of right and wrong, or even their meanings. But given the context of this discussion, I do not believe that anyone, not even nihilists, can abstain judgment on materialism and hypocrisy and walk out the door.

An ethical discussion on hypocrisy should inevitably lead to a supplementary discussion on the notion of gratification. During a discussion on this topic, Avital Ronell mentions that in today’s society, many of us would give five bucks to a random beggar and feel great about ourselves; we feel gratified in our however small act of helping someone. Ronnell says we shouldn’t think that; our susceptibility to be so easily gratified is one of the reasons why there is such a disgusting gap between the poor and the rich and why those living in the third world are having such limited progress in improving their standards of living.

The flip side of our easily-gratified persona is the difficulty to cause one to feel true guilt from their actions. To this, Ronell brings up the example of then-governor George W. Bush, who proudly claims that he doesn’t lose any sleep when he refuses to grant clemency to death row inmates, and as a President who has sent thousands of Americans to their deaths, for a cause that one could say is not even remotely close to being justified.

Peter Singer’s applied ethics also speaks to this issue. His argument is such that we are not only accountable for the things we do, but also for the things we don’t/omit to do. By this principle, Singer exemplifies his point by saying that if a person sees a boy drowning and requires our immediate help, his instinct would be to help the boy, even if it means ruining the 800 dollar pair of shoes he was wearing. By this logic, if it costs him 800 dollars to save a boy, we could also, instead of spending those 800 bucks on the shoes, donate it to an organization like OXFAM or UNICEF, which can probably save more than one child with this money.

This argument connects with the gratification one. The capitalist society has tuned its people to possess such mentality that we feel gratified in obtaining / achieving the wrong things (like buying a nice designer bag, or donating money to fix a humanitarian problem), rather than the right ones (provide hands-on aid, or donate on a regular basis).

Think about it this way: the poor-rich gap in Hong Kong is as bad as it gets, but most living in the upper-middle and upper class just turn a blind eye towards this fact. They justify this with this line of thinking: “we earned this; we have the right to spend lavishly and live luxurious lives, and those who are poor didn’t work hard enough.” If the Hong Kong media does a big televised event, perhaps once every few months, about poverty in Hong Kong, maybe we can highlight the poverty in Hong Kong itself, and have celebrities and politicians gather in a calling to help the poor. Note that this still does not solve the fundamental problems of easy-gratification, but it’s a start.

So am I saying the Hong Kong people shouldn’t donate money to the disaster victims of Taiwan? Of course not; I want them to understand their actions: I want them to understand that there are many people in many parts of the world who are experiencing as bad hardships as the Taiwanese but are not receiving the media attention their deserve. I want to see rigorous efforts to organize humanitarian aid groups and have volunteers sent to Taiwan to provide hands-on assistance. I want them to know that even though money helps, they shouldn’t feel better because they contributed a few dollars to the cause. I want them to know what’s right and what’s wrong.

The Limp: A Social Experiment and Philosophical Discussion

As I am writing this, I am sitting in a Starbucks, with my cane leaning against the wall for everyone to see. The experience so far has been exquisite. Being a handicapped person, albeit a temporarily handicapped one, translates to essentially being an almost totally different person.

Here is how it all started: On the night of Thursday of last week (August 13), I decided to catch the 10:45 show for “Public Enemies” at the theatre. I left my house at 10:30, and got there at 10:45. Thinking that I was late, I started running as soon as I got out of my car. That was when I slipped just a tiny bit, not enough to cause a fall, but enough to twist my ankle. As a matter of fact, the ankle felt fine that night, but had gotten worse on the next day.

The irony here is that earlier in the day, I had ran my ass off on the treadmill at the gym and was fine, but I twisted my ankle while merely jogging in the parking lot of a movie theatre.

The cane, and ‘the pack’

On Friday, the day after my injury occurred, I went to a shopping mall to look for a fashionable jacket. It’s one of the bigger shopping malls in the city, with long walking distances from one side of the mall to the other. I had my cane in the car but decided against bringing it because I was meeting up with a friend and did not want to appear overly injured (yea, I know…).

Bad decision.

First of all, I had forgotten about the size of the mall when I got there, and only remembered after leaving the parking lot that the stores that I wanted to go to were spread all over the mall.

Second and more importantly, I underestimated the severity of my injury. I was able to walk normally in the duration of the meeting with my friend, but afterwards, as I began walking from one side of the mall to the other, my foot noticeably had gotten worse. It was soon no longer an option for me whether or not to walk with a limp, and towards the end I had to take a few breaks during my walk back to the car.

What I saw during my painful journey through the mall were twofold. Firstly, I had people looking at me because of how I was walking. Now, of course, almost all of those who looked probably were not discriminatory and were probably merely curious or concerned with my injury. But the larger problem was the speed of which I was walking, and the fact that I was walking noticeably slower than ‘the pack’ that were travelling through the vast halls of the shopping center, and people had to avoid walking into me.

This idea of ‘the speed’ and ‘the pack’ goes far beyond the notion of merely a bunch of shoppers strolling through a mall. How fast someone walks when they are in a mall tells a lot about their personalities. For example, a person who walks fast and energetic might seem to be in high spirit or in a hurry, whereas a person who walks slow might be viewed as laid-back or lazy. Yet, they are more or less in ‘the pack’, like a fish swimming with a large pack of its kind in a sea of wondrous goodies.

The idea becomes a bit more complicated when the method of walking factors into the discussion. The idea of the speed of a person’s walk potentially showing his or her personalities fits into a larger societal norm–confirmation process. Everybody fits into a category. These categories evolve overtime, but they nevertheless perpetuate the function of ‘the pack’. The question of how a person walks goes beyond ‘the pack’, because it has nothing to do with the speed of the walk or the facial expressions of the person when he walks. Thus, a person who walks differently stands out from the pack. This is what I felt when I limped slowly from one end of the mall to another; not only was I slow, my limping motion prevented me from fitting in, thus inducing people to be annoyed at my slowness, looking at me and wondering what is wrong, while still others thinking why I am hurt but that I did not use a cane.

The cane also in some ways works hand in hand with ‘the pack’. It is vital to note that even if a person does not walk in the same way as a ‘normal’ person, he can nonetheless compensate by turning to various assistances to at least gain the sufficient speed to join the pack, thereby emerge himself into normalcy. And when a person does not seek this assistance, he is viewed as ‘strange’ or weird.’

This is perhaps the most important part of this section: My decision to not use a cane and limp my way around the mall directly affected the way I was being viewed while I was at the mall. People think I am strange because I was limping without a cane; with the cane itself belonging to a category of normality, my lack of using a cane did not fit, and therefore I was not ‘normal’.

The beholder is also an interesting concept. What people think when seeing a limping person walking without a cane is the result of social indoctrinations in teaching us what to think when we see a person who limps, in that we naturally associate ‘limping’ with ‘cane.’ This line of thinking is by no means original; Foucault has made similar comparisons in his studies of insanity. By labeling some of the sick as ‘the insane’, Foucault argues, we are able to identify those who are not, thus ‘the normal’ (and ‘the pack’ in my example) is put into work.

Stay tuned for additional commentary for this social experiment.