It's Hard to Keep Your Faith

By: S. Rowan Wolf, Ph.D., Uncommon Thought Journal
June 7, 2004 This work is under a fair use Creative Commons License

Sometimes it is a real struggle for me to keep my faith in humans. As a species, we are capable of such great acts of love and compassion. On the other hand, we are capable of tremendous acts of cruelty and evil. My faith in humanity is shaky at best, but it took a real blow last night when I read the Independent/UK article Afghan children fall prey to killers who trade human organs (Mike Collett-White, 6/07/04). Children are being kidnapped and killed in Afghanistan so their organs can be harvested for the black market. The children are apparently being killed so that their kidneys can be sold in Pakistan to patients offering big money for the organs.

This is certainly not the only horror story of the black market in human organs. In China (and I'm sure elsewhere), poor people sell their organs (a kidney, an eye, etc.) for a pittance in order to feed their families. Now in Afghanistan we have this travesty of humanity.

One can understand the desperation on the part of starving people to sacrifice parts of themselves. It is more difficult to understand how little one must think of others to kill them and take those organs. What is driving this?

Well, the desire to live longer with the economic resources to back it up would be the short answer. We are creating a world where apparently people feel OK about living on the suffering (and lives) of others. We see that in broad scale with a global economy provides cheap goods steeped in the blood and misery of others, and the indiscriminant destruction of the environment. It feels a bit different though when a society is structured towards that end, and an individual paying for the death of another so they can have a kidney. At root, it isn't so different. They are driven by, and justified by the same forces and beliefs. Some people are worth more than others. Those worth more have a right to take what they want.

In the US, the majority is happy to turn a blind eye to the death and destruction it takes to live the way we do. When the issue comes up, those who benefit most are happy to tell us that it is someone else's fault. "We pay so little because we don't want to upset the economy over there." "A dollar goes a lot farther in X than it does in the US, so you can't compare." "Children are traditionally used as labor in X and we are being culturally sensitive in not challenging their customs."

On the other hand, there is a clear understanding that US interests in the Middle East are about oil. We have known for decades that energy (oil) dependence held the US hostage. So what happens? Oil consumption goes up. The SUV becomes the most popular vehicle on the road. A few thousand people die in Iraq, a few tens of thousands have their lives degraded and shortened, but the oil flows. It is so much easier to accept the line that we are "freeing" the Iraqi people, then what is actually happening.

All comfortable lies for a society.

But what kind of lies can the patient in Pakistan tell themselves as they receive a kidney from a murdered child? Perhaps that the child "died for a good cause." Or that they (the child) probably would have died in a few years anyway (from the social and economic conditions in Afghanistan)." Or maybe "They gave up their life so I can continue to be successful." Maybe those are comfortable lies as well.

Perhaps, what makes humans truly different from other species is the ability to deceive ourselves with comfortable lies. Other species tell the truth, they live the truth. Self (and other) deception is not in their makeup. What a trait to drive humanity to the top of the food chain - not opposable thumbs, not speech, and not bigger brains, but the ability to lie to ourselves and others.