Fixing Things

I was squatting down, doing my business in the bathroom and I just realized why there is water in the toilet -- It’s not only because it flushes out the feces out, but also it takes the smell away from whatever you digested. Problem solved.

 

Yet, in one incident, Americans thought it’d be best that they would replace the latrines (something that they were completely content with), with flushing toilets in order to promote “the quality of life” of an African province some time ago. Prior to this renovation, the water supply was low but ample enough to be lived on everyday. However, problems arose, apparently because the toilet has ironically flushed the water supply out to the point where water had to be rationed only to be used four days a week instead. But to my utter amazement, when I went to Israel this past summer (during the dry season), there are two buttons to flush out the excrement or whatever you did in the toilet. There is a big button and a little one; the big button to flush out the big one, and the little one to flush out your pee pee. Problem averted, right?

 

America thinks that it can solve just about anything and everything, looking for ways to the betterment of our living conditions, as if it is pitiful. Patents are formed, suggesting that we need this particular item, and our life was somehow worse before we even knew that this item existed. For example, the ShamWow (I pity the poor fellow in the commercial as he has become the laughingstock of infomercials in America).

 

The ShamWow apparently can hold up to twelve times its weight and be reused multiple times with its 10-year guarantee. I say it’s a sham for we can use torn garments to do the same job without waiting those 2-weeks for delivery. But whenever I see that commercial, I think to myself and I seem to justify that I MIGHT need it for the future (this of course, can stem from materialism and consumerism as well).

 

I would suggest that America has in itself, a sense of pride in fixing problems and this understanding that everything can be fixed. So when Americans and if I may add, westerners go abroad to help another developing country, we tend to implement our advices thinking that they are beneficial. We are not prideful when we do it; it is just society’s influence on us that causes us the want to fix things. And perhaps, this is our biggest vice. So, the question worth asking is,

 

Are we imposing some ideals and suggestions that are not necessarily better, and contrary to their philosophies and ideals?

 

Democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq at best, are called “works in progress.” Western thought, until post-modernity, included modernity and has taken over our understanding of philosophy and theology. However it is something incompatible with the Eastern thought. Thus, we are left in this impasse in our dialogue with others, and that is for two reasons.

 

First, some things just cannot be fixed. I think of Jack from Lost, who is told by his wife on her way out of the relationship, “you will always need something to fix,” when ultimately it is himself that needs to be fixed.

 

Secondly, our imposition of capitalism has debilitated other impoverished countries. Many times, self-interest outweighs the good in humanity, which concludes to say that I wouldn’t call the countries a developing one, for they will always be the footstools of the other power countries like America. Such a sad thought.

 

I leave you with no suggestions or solutions. I question our motives in why we help others and I wonder if things were at it was prior to our ideals were imposed upon. It is just sad to see that countries want to be like us but at best, they can only be mere servants to the owner of the mansion and will never be part of the family.

 

  Daniel Lee