"Hommage"

Dear Dodo,

I will be honest and I will tell you up-front that I did not know much about you - that is until Julien Lepers made your glorious portrait in one of his "questions" at TV5 Monde! You may wonder who is Julien, what is a "question"... - let me tell you for one thing how surprised I was when I realized that you are the symbol of Mauritius today! Is that not "posthumous" (for lack of a better word) fame, or what? Of course, of course I know what you are going to respond: "What does it matter now since I am dead?" Well, this is something we do often down here on earth: first we kill, then we bestow glory! Oh! Just because I hate leaving questions unanswered, let me tell you that you appeared on a television show.. and Julien was the host..

But this is all nonsense what I am writing here.. You do not even know what a television is... But I cannot go into that, it will take me forever to finish off, and you must know that we, modern human beings, are on a "tight schedule", we have a thing we call clock and it regulates our lives.. it tells us how much time we have to accomplish something, until we move on to the next one.. So I beg for your understanding, please bear with me and I promise I will answer all questions you may have. Speaking of begging, this is probably the point we should start apologizing, I and my fellow humans, begging for your forgiveness...

I am very much aware by now that the reason why you are not among us, is because people like me -well, my/our ancestors to be precise- decided to put you out of this world. When the first sailors arrived in Mauritius in the 16th century they spotted you immediately since you could not fly...then you know the story. You could not fly and we could not wait - we humans, let me tell you that, we can get very greedy.. In just about a century you were "extinct" - fancy word for a terrible act, don't you agree? Much as I would have liked for you to continue to roam in Mauritius, so I could come and visit you, I only wonder, was it perhaps better that you never lived to see our "décadence"?

I do not know how much of a consolation this is to you, but I must tell you that it is not only innocuous species like you that we are after; we go after pretty much everything that can give us even minimal utility, we even go after our fellow humans. No! No! Do not think that we eat human flesh, only our behavior is cannibalistic. And yet I am sure you will be equally disgusted, once you get to learn some of our habits: we have this thing here we call "war" where we pretty much set out to fight against each other for a bigger or a smaller cause. Sometimes we prefer not to kill people but instead to "torture" them - how shall I explain this? Imagine for example if someone was slowly pulling off your feathers... I know, I know you surely do not want to hear more about us. And what a shame really, I was about to start talking about our grand civilizations... We take great pride in them you must know.

I will let you now. Surely, you must be tired hearing all that we humans do - but this was my only way to contextualize your story and explain -in a simple way- why today you are only on stamps and postcards... More importantly, it is the debt I sense on my shoulders too, even though I do not hail from either Portugal or the Netherlands: learning from Julien that you did not have any predators until we, humans, came to Mauritius was enough to cause a sense of embarassment! If you still maintain any contacts down on earth, please let them know that they should be wary of humans... that is, if I am still allowed to offer a piece of advice..

Truthfully yours and very, very humbled,
a human being from Earth

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For more information about the Dodo: Description of the Dodo Bird
Note: The picture that prefaces the letter is also part of the instructive website referenced above.

94

When Hannah Arendt published her pivotal, prototypic and controversial [when juxtaposed against her previous publications] "Eichmann in Jerusalem" in 1963 she argued her famous "banality of evil" thesis - that people committing atrocities need not be inherently bad but may be influenced by an ideology or a set of codes. Because they are good "bureaucrats" they abide by rules, principles and orders thereby committing crimes.

Seeing the atrocities that occur on a daily basis at Iraq -United Nations announced today the death toll for Iraqis to be 34,000 for 2006- I cannot help but question what is that has made "evil" look like a "banality" in the lives [and hence the culture] of a people. Conversely, what sort of "banality" is this, which spurs an almost routinized coverage of Iraq by media and non-media actors, an awfully repetitive sorrow-dominated vocabulary to politicians and officials of any sort and a "yet again" or "not again" [at best] reaction to "innocent, powerless" civilians, if not of "evil"?

A great paradox and virtue of language is this, namely that it allows one to play games with words, to deconstruct phrases and to create wholly new and different meanings based on a word or two. Language can also downplay or increase the importance of virtual anything simply through wise word choice and word ordering. But numbers, are not like that; numbers cannot get dressed up to look "good" or "sloppy", they are destined to carry the naked version of the story - whatever this story maybe.

It so comes that 94 is the number for Iraq. If 34,000 was difficult to comprehend, the fact that this figure translates to 94 people being killed every single day at Iraq may help those not handling easily big figures, myself included. Early on we learn also that metaphors help, as they render our speech or writings clearer. Strikingly painful as it may appear, and it is, 94 dead Iraqis is almost like if a Boeing 737 crashed everyday or if the entire grade six of a 564 elementary school disappeared again and again and again every single day of the calendar year - rain or shine.

It almost causes shame to me the fact that I dared to quantify in this most disgraceful and dishonorable manner human life. And as I am about to delete my previous statement, I decide I will not - I think it does much less justice to victims to refuse to refer to their plight; it is much too hypocritical and shameful to aspire to a Pontius Pilate attitude when we all have some share of responsibility for the atrocities on the Iraqi soil. Unfortunately, few of us have the excuse of "abiding by an ideology" and fewer still are "the good bureaucrats" exercising at our best the civil duties entrusted to us.

That 94 people die everyday at Iraq because of the mess calls, once more, for urgent action. Much advocacy still focuses on "an end to the war". Will that suffice? Most journalists and experts signal otherwise; they talk about a possible splitting of Iraq into three states and they allude to further bloodshed. Even the most optimist would agree that the current state of Iraq is one of utter fragility and instability and that no deus ex machina can bring this tragedy to a bloodless conclusion. Regardless of the course of affairs at Iraq what seems clear is that we, non-Iraqis, are not entitled to any more mistakes, to any more gambling of human lives in our futile attempt to transform "vision" into action. Our duty is to help: may we be fortunate to find ways to assist - not to absolve ourselves from our atrocities, but, simply to decrease suffering. And to lower this damned 94.

References and Links:

in English: Blasts kill at least 70 in Baghdad; U.N. reports 34,000 Iraqis died in '06

en Français: Irak: plus de 100 morts dans des violences, 34.000 civils tués en 2006

an interesting study of Arendt's "banality of evil" in the context of fear is to be found in Corey Robin "Fear: The History of a Political Idea" (Oxford: OUP, 2004).