A Close Look at Genocide: Rwanda

If you're feeling dark about the state of humanity based on killings in news in the USA of late, you might benefit from the perspective of understanding exactly how far down the pit of darkness goes.

The full tour of the darkness of humanity needs to include a look at the Rwandan Genocide. According to Wikipedia:

The Rwandan genocide, known officially as the genocide against the Tutsi,[2] was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government. An estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed during the 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994,[1] constituting as many as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population.

But Wikipedia doesn't set the atmosphere quite right. It's a bit too sterile. You're looking at things from too far a distance. For a view from the ground, I recommend Episide 16 of the Jocko podcast, "Machete Season" in which he reads excerpts from a book with the same title.

I recommend that you do this and I'll use Jocko's own words to make the case:

  • ...something that I know: there is evil in the world, there is darkness, and it exists and it is real. And it comes from us. It's human. It is people. WE... are evil. It wasn't a monster that murdered all those people: those men, and those women, and those children, and those babies. It wasn't an animal or some force of nature like a tornado or a hurricane or a tsunami. And it wasn't Satan, and it wasn't some mysterious evil spirit. It was us. And that is downright horrifying.
  • But there is a counter to that. There is a dichotomy to that. And that is the fact that while we are the evil in this world... WE... are also the good. We are the light that counters this darkness.
  • We all have the capacity... all of us do in some way... maybe not directly. Maybe not face-to-face with evil. But we can help. All of us can help
  • The message that I take away from all of this is that... WE need to focus on what good we can do to help people. Who can we help get better? Who can we help improve their station in life? What threatened person can we defend? What oppressed person can we free? What fellow human being can we remove from the grip of fear?
  • "What person in the world can we take from the darkness out into the light?" That's the question and the answer that I brought away from this.

It comes down to this: "You can't appreciate the light if you don't understand the darkness."

We can have a look at the darkness. We can appreciate the light around us. And we can focus. And we can ask ourselves how can we bring our brothers and sisters out into the light.

I journey through the darkness to fully understand just how light it is. That's my case for checking out the Rwandan Genocide.

References

This is a Youtube video of the podcast reading. It's only the first hour or so of the video. There's some Q&A stuff in the second half.


Jocko Podcast 16 - With Echo Charles | Machete Season - YouTube

Adjust Your Perspective: Know Who The Enemy Is

"The enemy is out there," I said, pointing out the window to the world beyond. "The enemy is all other competing companies in your industry that are vying for your customers. The enemy is not in here, inside the walls of this corporation. The departments within and the subsidiary companies that all fall under the same leadership structure -- you are all on the same team. You have to overcome the 'us versus them' mentality and work together, mutually supporting one another."

"...It's about the bigger, strategic mission

From Chapter 5: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Parents: Be Aware... You May Be Keeping Up With The Jones's Kids

How much money are we willing to spend on our kids? How much time? How much effort? And how much sacrifice?

Raising your kids, and providing for them the best start you can is a sacred cow. Just try to question it out loud and you'd better be prepared for some judgment to be hurled your way.

Today's topic came up for me while reading the morning's blog posts in my RSS reader, which is an outdated way to subscribe to blogs.

RSS is antequated but democratic. Most important of all it is free of the crappy click-bait and post-modern one-liner meditation GIFs that abound on social media. Incidentally, it's the exact same medium I use for my podcast subscriptions, but podcast apps hide the RSS-ness of it all.

Keeping Up with The Jones's Kids

Back to the topic at hand... In an article (1) on the Mr. Money Moustache blog, I caught some insights that ring true. A section of it rails against the notion of a fancy education in which the author observes "a very common bias in US society":

...that spending an absolute sh**load of money on your children is a necessary and advantageous thing to do. You could sum up our generous but financially suicidal belief system in this quote from his story:

“I never wanted to keep up with the Joneses. But, like many Americans, I wanted my children to keep up with the Joneses’ children, because I knew how easily my girls could be marginalized in a society where nearly all the rewards go to a small, well-educated elite. (All right, I wanted them to be winners.)”

Parental FOMO

The article isn't primarily on this topic but it was the most interesting part. It sparked two very interesting insights for me:

  1. parents have to fight a bias toward unlimited and undisciplined spending on a fancy education for their kids to try to get them into "an educational elite".
  2. parents experience FOMO (fear of missing out) for their kids which drives them into a keeping up with the Jonses' kids behavior.

We're told nowadays to "check our privilege". (I hate this one, actually but it has been able to find cultural purchase for some very valid reasons). Jocko Willink and Leif Babin have an entire chapter in their book (3) about "checking your ego". These are things that blind you. They are sources of bias. That's why you need to find a way to escape their gravity.

We might have to add to this: "Check your FOMO". Parental or otherwise.

FOMO is subtle fear. It is sneaky and persistent. It keeps coming back around. And you will need conditioning to resist it.

"Discipline Equals Freedom"

I've been pondering these words a lot since I've been really enjoying the Jocko podcast (2). How can discipline mean freedom? Freedom from what?

Discipline frees you from being driven by emotion and limited by your biases.

Discipline means practicing checking ALL of your biases. (You don't want to work out this morning? Good! You're going to get after it anyway because we are doing this.)

Discipline frees YOUR MIND so that you can step back to assess a situation and make decisions from the better part of your nature.

References

  1. Article: The Cheap Ticket Into the Elite Class - Mr Money Moustache
  2. Jocko Podcast
  3. Book: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin