Unbridgeable differences
CO writes:
I may be reading more into this than I should, but I was struck by a scene from the movie The Last King of Scotland. Here the clip. (Spoiler alert.)
This movie is a semi-fictionalized story about a Scottish physician named Nicholas Garrigan who travels to Uganda to practice medicine in the 1970s and winds up becoming Idi Amin’s personal physician. (I think the character may have been a composite of two or three real-life persons.)
Garrigan goes to work in clinic in a remote rural outpost. One day, Idi Amin is traveling through the countryside in his motorcade, stopping at villages to give speeches. His car hits a cow on a country road, and Amin is slightly injured. Garrigan is summoned quickly to the scene. Amin is there with a sprained hand, while his entourage and people from the village are all standing around. Meanwhile, the dying cow lies by the side of the road, bawling in pain.
Garrigan begins to examine Amin’s hand, but he is distracted by the cries of suffering from the cow.
He barks out an order for someone to please put the cow out of its misery, but people stand around and do nothing. His assistant tries to explain to the people present that the cow is in pain, the cow needs to be euthanized at once. Of course, they need someone to explain that, they don’t get it on their own; they don’t even really get it when it’s been explained.
After a moment or two, Garrigan can’t stand it anymore, so he grabs Amin’s gun off the hood of the car, and shoots the cow. Everyone is stunned. Amin is mightily impressed because Garrigan didn’t shoot him instead, which is what anyone else probably would have done, given the opportunity.
The scene struck me, because it reminded me of moments I’ve had in my experiences with people in the Third World. You can get accustomed to being around different kinds of people, and you get used to paying more attention to the things you have in common with them. But every once in a while, something will happen that reveals that they are different than you, way more different than you ever imagined. It’s like this chasm suddenly opens up, and you realize it’s a breach that can’t be crossed.
I’m hardwired like Garrigan—I can’t stand listening to the sound of an animal in pain. It gets to me on a visceral level. Just listening to the neighbor’s dog yawp when he gets hung up on his leash can drive me crazy within seconds. I don’t think it has anything to do with the being raised to be nice to animals. I don’t think it’s something that is taught.
But not everybody is like that. All I can say is, those Ugandans could have stood around all day and listened to that poor cow, and it would not have bothered them at all, it wouldn’t even occur to them to do something about it. I don’t know if this movie intended to be politically incorrect. But it certainly made the point that it has something to do with race.
- end of initial entry -
Alan Z. writes:
I find myself in disagreement with your reader CO. It is certainly true that there is a racial component to tolerating useless noise, as any one passing through the various New York City neighborhoods can tell you. Being affected by the suffering of animals is, I think, a learned trait. The behavior of Medieval and Renaissance Europeans is relevant here—the burning of sacks filled with animals was a common carnival entertainment.
Robert B. writes:
Alan Z. wrote:
I find myself in disagreement with your reader CO. It is certainly true that there is a racial component to tolerating useless noise, as any one passing through the various New York City neighborhoods can tell you. Being affected by the suffering of animals is, I think, a learned trait. The behavior of Medieval and Renaissance Europeans is relevant here—the burning of sacks filled with animals was a common carnival entertainment.
My daughter, who has an Oxford Ph.D in Medieval Studies, disputes this. So do I. We would like to see his sources.
As a side note, the Chinese butcher dogs while they are still alive, as they believe it enhances the flavor of the meat. There are many Youtube videos depicting this.
Alan Z. writes:
In reply to Robert B, I’ll have to concede his point as far as the Middle Ages go. A quick online search will bring up a book titled “The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes from French Cultural History.” Here you will find more than you want to know on this custom. The era is later than I thought, the 1600s to the early 1700s.
There was plenty of similar treatment handed out to animals, particularly cats, during the Middle Ages, but this was not a fun carnival custom, rather it was religious in origin.
Mark Eugenikos writes:
CO said:
“The scene struck me, because it reminded me of moments I’ve had in my experiences with people in the Third World. You can get accustomed to being around different kinds of people, and you get used to paying more attention to the things you have in common with them. But every once in a while, something will happen that reveals that they are different than you, way more different than you ever imagined. It’s like this chasm suddenly opens up, and you realize it’s a breach that can’t be crossed.”
This reminds me of my experience in India: I was there on business several years ago, going from city to city within a span of one week. Our group was fairly large, I’d say at least eight people from the U.S. plus a few locals from the same company. As such, we needed three cars to get around from airport to hotel to meetings and back. We’d normally get cars from the hotels where we were staying, and all the hotels had many bellboys helping with customers’ luggage. During that week I didn’t once see a bellboy use common sense when loading luggage in a car trunk. The bellboys put wheeled suitcases with handles down and in, and with wheels up and out, so that when the next person had to unload, they had to pull the suitcases like boxes, not being able to reach the handles.
In one particular instance, three of us were going to share a car, and we had a few extra pieces of luggage since we were hauling some demo equipment. The bellboys suggested we get a sedan. We told them no, we needed an SUV that was parked next to it, since our luggage wasn’t going to fit into the trunk of the sedan (just one look at the pile of our luggage was enough for us to determine that). The bellboys insisted the sedan was going to be fine. They started loading the luggage into the trunk of the sedan, and by the time they filled the trunk, there were at least a couple of suitcases still waiting outside. That must have finally convinced them, and I couldn’t help but add, “We told you it wasn’t going to fit,” to get them to load our luggage into the SUV (which we were going to pay for anyway).
I know this isn’t a life-changing experience, but it struck me how people that do something simple for a living can still be completely baffled by it, in a way unimaginable to a Westerner.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 28, 2012 11:26 AM | Send