belief

One of the recurring themes in Power's "Problem From Hell" is how response to genocide is often hindered by an inability to believe. This is distinct from an accusation of lying. It's not that, when confronted with the notion that people are being tortured, raped, killed, humiliated, on massive massive scales, that people say--I don't believe you because you're lying. It's that they say, I don't believe you because I can't believe you. It's so awful, people can't imagine that it would actually happen. Even the victims themselves would hold out hope, make up for themselves excuses, that what was happening wasn't really, that it wouldn't reach them eventually, that they would be different. In many ways, this is an instrument of survival, but in other ways it keeps us in a damaging narrowness.

On Park and Crown, there is a building whose brick wall has recently, for some reason, been covered by a black and white mural of Anne Frank's face. In the corner it tells us, as she did: "Believe in people." I remember reading as a young girl, her diary of a young girl, and being struck by the same sentence that made her famous--"in spite of it all, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

My own sense of disbelief arises more in response the inability to believe in bad, than in response to the bad itself. I've always thought of myself who believes in people too, but lately I find myself thinking more that it's not a belief in goodness or the opposite, but an openness to the full spectrum in between. I believe in capacity. People are capable of incredible good, and that is incredible; they're also capable of incredible bad, and that is also incredible. I don't think recognizing one negates the other. Regardless of which way you think people tend to lean, the most human thing is that they can lean any which way, depending on what is supporting or not supporting them.

I think one of the nicest things about doctoring is the opportunity to know people, not kind friendly grateful people, but all people in whatever it is that they have become. This isn't to say that there aren't things to dislike; I dislike a million things about a million different people. But if we marvel at our own humanity and wonder at how it is that we can accomplish so much, I think it's important to recognize that the root of it all is the same range of possibility that gives rise to inhumanity and how it is that we can destroy so much.