The Premise Matters
Savan, a wealthy Cambodian minister, went to Nicaragua to visit Juan Carlos, also a government official and a long time friend of his. Juan's estate was tasteful and elegant, a bastion of civilization and luxury in a poverty-stricken land. "This is a beautiful estate, Juan Carlos. How ever did you afford it?" Savan asked.
"See that road out there? The new national highway?" Juan Carlos asked, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Ten percent of the highway budget went to building the road, ninety percent went to building my house." Savan laughed and nodded appreciatively, and they resumed sipping their Dom Perignon.
A month later, Juan Carlos went to pay a visit to Savan at his jungle villa in the wilds of northeastern Cambodia . "Savan, this is positively palatial!" Juan Carlos exclaimed, as they chatted over mimosas in the breakfast nook. "How did you pay for it?"
"We also introduced a tax to build a new highway. See the new national highway out that window?" Savan asked his friend. "No," Juan Carlos replied, puzzled. "Exactly!" Savan exclaimed.
It's funny but it's not. Corruption pervades every aspect of governance here. Rules are rules, but every official has his price. As I ride through the streets of Phnom Penh on a motorbike, it's amazing how many Lexus SUVs you have to dodge to reach your destination. Their drivers cruise through the streets of the capital with tinted windows and air conditioning, never leaving their bubble of security and never entering the slums that are home to the victims of their corruption.
I personally feel a sense of rage when I am narrowly missed by some spoiled Cambodian youngster driving his parents' car. In the absence of enforceable laws, economic inequalities more readily translate into "my life is worth more than yours." I know if one of these oblivious youths were to actually hit me, chances are they would still be able to make their lunch date.
Early on, Cambodians learn that to beat the system, or even to be a part of the system, you have to grease the wheels. In theory, public schools are free, but in practice the government teachers are paid so little that virtually all of them charge illegal attendance fees, making classes inaccessible to many poor Cambodians. Who is cheating whom? These aren't teachers driving Lexus SUVs. These are working Cambodians who don't make enough money to provide a comfortable life for their families on what the government pays them. So is it wrong when they cheat their students and their families by making them pay? Of course it's wrong! But nobody blames them.
Recently a scandal erupted in Battambang. A group of aspiring teachers reported that they were cheated when they each paid $450 to officials in the provincial Ministry of Education as a 'bid for professional placement' and the officials failed to hire them for positions. The scandal wasn't that officials were accepting money in exchange for giving people jobs, but rather that the officials failed to deliver after having been bribed. How dare they?
Healthcare is no exception. Doctors in a government hospital in Cambodia make $35 a month. Consequently all doctors have additional fees. These hospitals are supposed to be affordable and accessible to the masses, but nobody can be admitted without paying what essentially amounts to a bribe. The hospitals are under-occupied, and house physicians spend a solid chunk of their time running private clinics out of their homes. I've heard horror stories of women giving birth to children outside virtually empty hospitals because they can't afford to be admitted.
It's hard to be optimistic about human nature in a place like Cambodia . There's a maddening feeling that everything is okay here as long as you can get away with it. But what bothers me most is the creeping suspicion that in the absence of enforceable regulations, most of us would behave in the same way. I have this uncomfortable sensation, as if we all have one hand stuck in the communal cookie jar. I worry that in the darkest corner of our hearts, we're all a bunch of cheats.
I'm a cheater. I might not be a foreman at a factory in Phnom Penh that exploits its workers, but I could very well own stock in it or have purchased a shirt that was made there. I don't really research the companies I buy my clothes from. To avoid ambiguity, I could purchase my clothes from a fair trade guild that supports artisans in the third world. But if these programs are sustainable they probably don't pay much more than a decent factory does. And if they aren't sustainable, then I'm better off supporting a factory.
Or let's say I decide to be really benevolent, forgo buying the shirt and donate the money I would have spent to a nongovernmental organization that works on labor issues. There are a lot of upstanding organizations out there, but there are also a lot of cheaters. In addition to being legitimate, I can only hope that the organization is not just doling out support indiscriminately to workers who say they need it without ensuring that they are learning ways to generate their own income. Otherwise I'm generating dependency.
For the sake of argument, I'll pretend that I've found an honest NGO that does outstanding work. Still, at least ten percent of everything I donate goes to paying for overhead. A percentage will go to paying for some expat hiring for house help, or sending their children to an international school, or buying their SUV with air conditioning. Again, not that there is anything wrong with that!
But it makes me a little bitter about not buying the shirt.
I used to wonder how we could be so oblivious to the harm we do to others simply by participating in a global economy, and my answer was always that when we participate in a global economy we don't see who we are cheating. I thought that humans are by nature empathetic creatures, and when we see a fellow human suffer as a result of our own actions we feel remorse.
But in the absence of geographic distance, cheaters always find some way to distance themselves from the cheated. It can be economic in nature, cultural or racial. Nothing disturbs me more than the spectacle of Cambodians cheating other Cambodians, victims who are so close that the cheaters can reach out and touch them.
There is no sense of solidarity, no pride in alleviating the suffering of your neighbor. In fact, some Cambodians have embraced the perverse opposite of a good neighbor policy. Land tenure is a huge problem. Wealthy Cambodian property owners will 'sell' areas that have been heavily land mined to poor villagers, who accept the risk of de-mining in order to make the land livable and farmable. They make this land habitable literally with their sweat and blood. They give their lives and limbs for the possibility of achieving a sustainable source of income, only to have the land repossessed years later by the same wealthy property owners with guns who claim they were only leasing the land.
The government doesn't prosecute, because often the perpetrators are part of the government. Some Cambodians cry out for justice, but not too loudly because defamation is a criminal act and they don't want to be thrown in prison. And the cheaters win, oftentimes at the expense of their own countrymen.
I can't explain this or understand it. Certainly part of my inability to wrap my mind around it is due to the fact that I remain an outsider. I see all Cambodians as a community because I don't know any better. Cambodia , like any country, has racial, religious and socioeconomic tensions. All those distinctions and differences that make it easy to cheat someone else.
But if every country has these tensions, why is brutality and cheating so much more pervasive here than it is in the U.S. ? While reviewing literature on the Cambodian psyche for my research, I came across the following assessment:
"Social scientists who have worked to any extent in Cambodia agree that the level of social integration in Cambodia is unique… Families could live relatively separate lives due to the structure of land ownership, low population density, and huge forests as habitat… An added consequence of Khmer Rouge totalitarian terror was that trust between people was shattered, and areas where one would feel safe and secure became smaller and smaller, a process that occurs in many countries over periods of civil warfare and terrorist rule."
Aha! So it was the war that did it! No trust, therefore no contracts, therefore lawlessness, therefore cheating.
I cling to this academic explanation. It is so comforting to point to factors A, B and C, and claim they are the cause of suffering and injustice. I don't want to dig any deeper. I don't want to wonder how a regime like the Khmer Rouge existed on the face of this earth. I don't want to wonder what effect America 's sideshow bombings had on social cohesion and political affiliations in Cambodian border towns. I don't want to wonder how people can kill each other when it isn't absolutely necessary. I don't want to see the universal guilt, to know that we all have dirty hands. Cruelty, politics, economics, distance. We were talking about cheating. Those are different questions, right?
The Documentation Center of Cambodia , DC-Cam, is an organization dedicated to preserving the history of the Pol Pot regime and the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. During my last trip to Phnom Penh I stumbled across it almost by accident. I was searching for the Coordination and Documentation Center , a non-profit that collects data on alternative care facilities throughout Cambodia , and ended up with directions to DC-Cam instead.
It was a conspicuously inconspicuous building, hidden behind a high gate with a small gold plaque near the door that said "Public Information Room." The research room was open and airy, with stone floors, large windows and plenty of natural light. It was almost deserted. However, instead of apologizing for my misunderstanding and striking out in search of the other documentation center, I found myself pouring over old editions of DC-Cam's publication, Searching for the Truth . I read ''confessions'' of KR political prisoners, an article on methods of torture KR cadres commonly employed, pictures of Cambodians who were sent to work camps and never heard from again, pages where people can publicize their search for lost family members, the story of a monk who created a memorial over a mass grave to preserve the remains from being eaten and trampled over by cows. That story in particular really hit me. The country was so quick to bury its memories that it forgot to bury the bodies. I left reluctantly. The DC-Cam research room felt like the history - quiet, waiting to be encountered, but empty. I want someone to always be there, keeping the documents company, looking at the pictures. So the ghosts of the past know they're not being ignored.
Cambodia is a country struggling to exist peaceably while perpetrators of mass genocide live in its midst, functioning as normal members of society. No wonder they aren't litigious. In the context of the KR tribunal, legal experts talk of confronting Cambodia 's culture of impunity. Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998. Go figure.
In Plato's Republic, Glaucon argues that justice is a social construct; no rational man would behave justly if there was no punishment for acting unjustly. He relates the story of the Ring of Gyges to substantiate his position. Gyges, a shepherd, finds a ring and discovers that when he wears the ring and turns it a certain way he becomes invisible. He uses his newfound power of invisibility to steal, to seduce and to murder, and is eventually made king. Glaucon claims that this behavior is the rule, not the exception. "No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point."
Socrates refutes Glaucon by pointing out that although Gyges may not suffer imprisonment or social censure, his behavior has intrinsic consequences. Justice exists independent of human laws and punishments, and Gyges' actions corrupt his soul. Therefore insofar as a rational man values his soul, he will behave justly.
But is it rational to value your soul? How do you explain that concept to a culture that is struggling to redefine itself after decades of genocide and strife? Metaphysics may be compelling in the classroom or the Agora, but when the chips are down everyone is out for number one. Wealthy Cambodians who have friends in high places (or who are themselves in high places) have all been given the ring of Gyges. They aren't so much above the law as they are in bed with the people who make and enforce the law. The law itself has lost its integrity, bending and stretching to appease the highest bidder.
And cheating isn't limited to the wealthy. When my mother was here visiting, our tour guide at Angkor Wat was explaining arranged marriages and boasting of Cambodia 's low divorce rate. I was irritated at my Mom's impressed look, and crossly told her to ask him about infidelity in Cambodia . The tour guide gave a "boys will be boys" chuckle, and admitted that most Cambodian men have 'second wives.'
I wanted to wipe the smirk off his pompous face with a brisk slap, but I didn't. Part of me wishes I had. The Cambodian practice of keeping 'second wives' is so widespread that it doesn't have to be invisible. It is an accepted part of the culture, and although women may not like it they don't have any recourse. First wives have to keep their mouths shut and watch while their husbands spend much-needed income on other women, and second wives are usually not in a position financially to refuse assistance and protection. Some women do take recourse: occasionally first wives will hire moto drivers to attack second wives with battery acid to disfigure them, rendering them undesirable to their husbands and publicly disgraced. This variety of 'justice' is so backwards and tragic that I wasn't surprised when I learned of it; it's right at home here in Cambodia .
So is Glaucon right? Is justice no more than a social construct, without which those who are rational would cheat their friends, their neighbors and their spouses? Or can we use Socrates' loophole--which has become so congested with traffic it resembles Phnom Penh during rush hour--and claim that cheaters aren't truly rational because they don't value their souls?
I side with Socrates. I believe there are moral laws, or at least inclinations, that can and sometimes do guide us in the absence of human law. I believe unmitigated self-interest is a consequence of fear, insecurity and our inability to understand the world and fully be a part of the world. A lapse in rationality: our inability to value our own souls.
It isn't a very satisfying belief, really. It's easier to believe in evil, in selfishness, because then you can blame and feel angry. If you don't believe in evil, it's difficult to point your finger. My own juvenile notion of justice which cries for retribution, castration and lifelong imprisonment finds it totally frustrating. But the more I live, the more I discover that there aren't easy answers.
Hobbes tells us that if we want to understand human nature, we should honestly examine our own hearts. Some nights when you are lying awake, alone, try and confront your desires. Forget what you parents have told you about right and wrong, forget what your creed says about charity and sacrifice, forget what you know you should say. What do you want? Really, what do you see? When the chips are down, what counts?
Some nights I find what Hobbes tells me I will find: self-interest. These are the nights when I am world weary: when I can be easily corrupted, when my hand is more likely to sneak into the cookie jar, when I secretly long to be inside the Lexus SUV looking out at the slums. But other nights I think Hobbes is wrong. When I examine my own heart, I see something that resembles a soul. Something I value. I find a passion for the world around me that shakes me. I find parts of myself that mourn for the pain and suffering of others, parts of myself that are riddled with guilt about the luxuries I surround myself with, parts of myself that are concerned for people I have never met. I think these parts of myself are there on the nights when Hobbes is right, too, but I am just too confused or scared or tired to see them. I don't work hard enough to see them, to embrace them, because they are exhausting and frightening and consuming. But they are wondrous too.
I agree with the implications of Hobbes' argument: in the absence of law, people cheat. But his premise bothers me. And the premise matters.
-- Jen Hasvold, March 2006
|
