Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Fred Matser: For me, it is very difficult to answer this question. I think that basically you live in a country, Jason, and in this situation, the United States and I mean your country on a different level is a country living together with other countries and you may be treated in that country unlovingly by the systems, but perhaps not by your parents and those that love you. Perhaps you are proud of the good or the functional values of your country. So, I really don't know. It's very difficult question for me to answer. But, I have compassion for you because I can imagine that if you are in that suppressed, less privileged situation, it must be very painful to experience that.

by Fred Matser

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Galsan Tschinag: Because you, Jason, love your american home. Mice are attached to the soil of the steppes, the grass and the smells with the same insistency and intimacy as the foxes, which live on them, as men, who hunt the latter because of their fur and who detest the former, because they can turn into a plague for him very fast.

by Galsan Tschinag

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Geert Lovink: I don't like to speak on behalf of oppressed people as you call them. This form of representational politics, I think has been quite bad and has led to a lot of ineffective moralism. I think we've really moved beyond that stage. There are so many ways to self empowerment. I'm a strong believer of radical confrontation. The integration, or whatever you want to call it, is probably not the way to go; and that confrontational politics, antagonistic politics that is not taking out differences that exists, but puts them on the table. In first instance, irreconcilable differences has to be improved. In that sense, I strongly believe that we need to return to confrontational politics of social movements in the '60s and '70s because the approach is to bag and to say how can we fit in, please society, make some place for us? This is really not the way to go. Instead, I would maybe rephrase your question in a much more radical confrontational…

by Geert Lovink

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Giora Feidman: Yeah, I know they exist this. I guess they exist this kind of resentment. Because I not agree to accept and to be part of this absolute negative energy of humanity, I will say if I arrive to this level, I expect, I don’t want to explain, that every human being should be in the conscious level that we are one family. If he is a black person, yellow or white, it’s one family. Personally, the color, when I see a black person, for me it’s like a God say to me “You see, I give a color to this person that you will not - that he have a very, very, special soul”. Well, as a musician, I listen to my colleagues, the black guys. What a musicians, what a singers, what a dancer! I think that but I feel they say before I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure, it is true. Remember, it’s not alternative; it’s only one family - the human family.

by Giora Feidman

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Gladman Chibememe: Yeah, it is really something that everyone especially from African countries who have got their friends, relatives, colleagues, taken transported to America for the joint slave trade. They are really concerned about these people and it is indeed an issue that, and as much as these people are asked to be part and parcel of the mainstream, the mainstream processes of the American system. It is embarrassing to find that sometimes these people are not tolerated. There is a lot of racism. They are called black Americans instead of Americans. They are discriminated against; in this case it really exposes them to a sense of self denial. So, what we are saying is that, there is need to have an element of coexistence and acceptance and tolerance. In this case even in the case of countries where we have the minority groups, indigenous communities, the people who are thought to be marginalized, they need to be tolerated as equal and genuine people within the system of – within the whole system in the country, be the economic system, agriculture system, or the political system. Because exclusion of certain sectors of the population is quite detrimental to development and also it has a lot of impact on how that type or that group of people progress and perceive themselves. Sometimes they think that [audio ends]

by Gladman Chibememe

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi: Yes, it is true. Many of us have similar situations in our own countries. Often we think that why am I being treated this way and why should I love my country? In a country where I don’t have an opportunity to live in dignity, naturally I do think,why should I love and defend my country? It is an issue that we need to tackle. But we cannot find an answer outside of our situations. We need to work towards finding a process, discovering a process, where I am treated,wanted. The question is not outside me, the question is what is that I should do to demand it, to get connected with similar people, and that we demand it together and achieve an equal right. I don’t want to run away from this situation. I want to live in the situation and demand that I be treated equal. That is how I look at it.

by Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Hans-Peter Dürr: We all have an aspiration to be embedded into a community. This is our basis. We need an environment where we can feel respected, where we can find trust in order we can really develop ourselves. Now that this homeland offers me a land where I grow up, the fact that I am not respected, or accepted, brings to me this feeling that I am not really a part of it. I am a second category. And that’s why I cannot expose or show my inner world. I am vulnerable, I am sensitive and I crawl back into myself, but I want to experience the community. I want to be a part of it, but I am not accepted into it. And that is the dilemma where most of these people are. They don’t trust each other anymore. Our society is also organized in the way, that it makes people always compete with each other, i.e. no more to cooperate, but to look for their own advantages against the others. That means not to open themselves to the others, but to hide his own abilities and skills and also not to trust someone else, when he says something, and to think that they only want to use his knowledge in order to bring themselves forwards. A society, which is based on competition, destructs the trust basis which is important for finding home, to feel embedded and feel secure there, and by that to be able to say earnestly what a person thinks and believes, to promote this trust and to share it with others.

by Hans-Peter Dürr

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Harry Wu: I think the asker himself is a black person. I believe that, in USA, there is no traditional racism or racism prescribed by the country. If a black person is treated like an unwanted child, it immediately comes down to whether or not he loves his family. From my point of view, this question is too big and too general. First of all, it is the most important whether American is a democratic country and whether it represents the advantages of the majority. And, then does the majority include unwanted black or unwanted individual? Some white man can also be unwanted. It should not be considered in this way, which is racism reflected from another angle.

by Harry Wu

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Helena Norberg-Hodge: Again, I think that the problem is the way that people are trapped in a system that leads often to very contradictory values that traps people to doing things that they don’t really want to do. In this case, there is no doubt that people feel a loyalty to their country, partly because that’s what they’ve been taught in schools and the media. The country though, is a concept, is an abstraction and that same country is treating many people very badly. Personally, again, I believe that when we examine the root causes of situations where we find ourselves trapped in a system that encourages us to carry contradictory values. We need to examine this system from a much deeper and a much broader point of view. Personally, I was taught everything by this experience in a non-western culture in Ladakh or little Tibet, where I had the privilege of experiencing a whole world, a whole way of life that was rooted in the natural world, in strong communities, and with a strong spiritual tradition that reminded people that all life is interdependent, that we are all interconnected. People also lived in that way. They were exchanging with each other. The local economy enabled them to exchange and to be interdependent. Living what the spiritual teachings taught. I then saw how in a very short period, the modern economy with modern education system and the modern supply of so called cheap oil, which is actually very expensive when you count all the cost, totally transformed the whole way of life and within a very short period created violence and conflict between people that had lived peacefully side by side for hundreds of years. Looking at that broader system that changes lives to distance them from nature and to create violent conflict …

by Helena Norberg-Hodge

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Homero Aridjis:

by Homero Aridjis

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Irina Yasina: If you continue to love and defend your country so you really love it! The fact that it treats you like an unwanted child doesn’t mean for you that you can stop loving it. It is difficult for me to reply to this question, because I have never been in such a situation. I am sorry but I will not answer this question.

by Irina Yasina

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Jerry Mander: Answertext will be available soon.

by Jerry Mander

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Jesper Green: Don’t watch the next three minutes. I don’t have an answer.

by Jesper Green

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Jodie Evans: Well, I guess this is the same as any abusive relationship that becomes home, that it's where we think it's the only place that we know. We get caught up in the patterns of is. As Jason, who's young and from Philadelphia, hasn't obviously been given many outs or opportunities, but if you only have had, you know, negative treatment, if you've only been disregarded, disrespected, treated like, less than an animal and not given any hope, there's no place or capacity for you to reach out of that into creating the possibility of something else. And if because he can ask this question, come to the place of understanding what he's living in, move through the processes of grief, and out of the place of victimhood not, not the space of not knowing that he's had an effect of something but that he's in a victim of it to a place of powerfulness, a place of being able to understand his own feelings and then a place of being active in some form to shift that. He would still find himself in a country where he's an unwanted child but not be able, not be used as a pawn for the power of that country and he would quit to love and defend and began to understand it and change. It's a very difficult thing to change and I can also [audio ends].

by Jodie Evans

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

John Gage: How do you think of yourself? Do you use words that put you in categories, black, American, black-American? Does the juxtaposition of categorical statements truly capture who you are? Why you say, do I a black-American feel that I should defend my country when my country does so little for me? The deep reasons for this stem from the foundations of human psychology, of tribe, of family, of belonging. Do you belong to these categories? You are in -- at the very base from your earliest years as a child, all of us have a feeling of identification with something, with our family, with our tribe, with our city, with the football team, the baseball team, the country we are part of, the military that’s analog to an athletic team for that country, we bear these symbols of identification proudly. When the contradictions arise that that belonging that you believe in fact is not real, does not yield any particular benefit to you, in fact, you are systematically excluded in this supposed membership from the benefits others that partake in the same groupings benefit from, this contradiction should you are implying alter how you feel about this grouping you have placed yourself in. I think you have to start thinking about this in a different way. You have to look inside you and say, from my life and my family and the environment in which I work, what am I doing that is creating something that benefits myself, my family and those around me, is there a reason that I am excluded from the same benefits of those around me in my larger general society? And if you find no reason, then those excluding you are those that must be changed. And then, the question of change in human behavior arises and this leads [audio ends].

by John Gage

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Jonathan Granoff: Jason, I can't speak as a black American, but I can say that it's important to note that this cancer of racism was at the founding of America, and it was right in the crucible of debate in 1787 when it was - America was created. And the issue of slavery was not resolved, and black people were treated as three-fifths of a person, and they're not treated a whole people all across America or the whole world today. Racism is a terrible cancer. But one could say that there's - and, women couldn't even vote. There's been a, hopefully there's a – there’s been the possibility of continued progress to greater social justice and freedom and dignity within the United States, and that possibility of progress might be worth defending and fighting for. But it would be arrogant for me to think that I can understand the suffering that Jason who asked this question has experienced because of his race. It would be arrogant of me to think that I could understand what it felt like when he was a child and he realized that he lived in a society in which many people judge others by the color of their skin, not the character of their person. It would be arrogant for me to think that I could understand that. And it might be difficult for Jason to understand my children - my wife comes from an Armenian heritage, and Armenians suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks, at one period in history. Or my family, my side of the family which is Jewish, and Jason I don't know if you'd understand the legacy of the holocaust and anti-Semitism for thousands of years. Dehumanization is the issue, for Jason, for me, for my children, for all of us. To treat others based on their identities and their religions and their races diminishes everybody. This is a cancer. It's a cancer of the spirit, it's a cancer of society.

by Jonathan Granoff

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Jonathan Meese: This question is too personal for me to answer.

by Jonathan Meese

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

Jonathan Stack: In a way it's because the inner child in you has been hurt as a child that you would even -- that you sort of internalize that oppression. On the other hand, I don’t know that America treats you as an unwanted child. I think they fear your empowered manhood. They are more afraid of what you could become because it's the fear of black men in America, why is that, because if you put your leg, if you put your foot down on the throat of somebody, you are afraid to let go of it, because you figure -- if you take the foot off, they are going to be pissed and are going to come up and fuck with you. So, the fact that you still love your country and are willing to defend it is because it's still -- it's so internalized in you that there is a sense of -- you still want to be -- it still provides for you this sense of some greater community that gives you a feeling of connectedness. I don't think they are mutually contradictory ideas in there. I think that the learning to love yourself and love your country and love beyond your country are all within the realm of possibilities. You shouldn't stop loving America. You should start making, A, loving yourself more, and B, working with others to make America a nation worthy of your love. That's what all of our responsibilities are. Personally, I can't imagine America without African American community. I don't see it as an unwanted child. I see it as a kind of deepest blessing to have that contribution to our society. It means that the possibility and potential for America is very much existing within the African American community and all oppressed communities, because just by their being oppressed means there once again lies this possibility for what [audio ends].

by Jonathan Stack

Sep 9, 2006 11:50:00 AM cite

José Manuel Prieto: This is a difficult question to answer (question 23), Why do we [continue to love and defend a country that treats us like an unwanted child]?

by José Manuel Prieto