Concept Garage

Those who bear witness to traumatic events of human design are caught in conflict between the victim and the perpetrator. It is indeed morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict and there can be no bystanders to such conditions. We should however be cognizant of the two important conflicting forces that are in to play, formidably represented by the bystander.

Inertia represents aggregate systemic forces which tend to favor the status quo; which usually tempt the bystander to take the side of the perpetrator; since all what all perpetrators ask is that bystanders do nothing. The status quo is indeed a very powerful force and communities tend to given in for the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim on contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and a great deal of painful remembering, it demands justice conscious evolution. Entropy provides the means for alternative systemic arrangements, if life is to continue on this sordid planet.

Its really encouraging to see western bystander democracies voicing their concern about human rights in Ethiopia; I was very grateful while learning that senators Russ Feingold and Pat Leahy have decided to side with millions of EPRDF victims, these two great systemic agents of the US political establishment, it seems, are for change, willing to battle against aggregated western interests and values, which tend to favor the status quo in Ethiopia and else where around the world. The status-quo indeed is a very powerful force, its protectorates personified by greedy lobbyists and egg head politicians defending and nurturing brutal dictators in hopes of keeping and protecting dysfunctional and environmentally unsustainable corporate economic supply chain.

Evolution being a force of mediation between inertia – those aggregate forces behind the murderous status-quo and entropy- forces that embody uncertain possibilities of change and evolution, its is devoutly to be hoped, evolution of US political system shall bring freedom to my fellow country men and millions around the world.