Is genocide a strong enough word? I can only answer for myself. I don’t think it is strong enough. It doesn’t evoke enough horror. When I think of everything that the word represents, I feel knotted inside in a way that is hard to describe in words. I am imagining very shameful acts that should not be imagined, and there are some acts I suspect that are worse than anything I can imagine. I can barely form images of what I am told of in my mind.

Feelings of empathy and powerlessness come easily. What do I do about it?

I buy a grande white mocha with whipped cream in starbucks every weekday morning. That is roughly $80 on coffee every month. It is a part of my daily routine now, and I drink it whether I feel like it or not. I spend over a thousand dollars a year on coffee. I am a self-proclaimed coffee hater. I hate the smell of coffee. White chocolate mocha, I love.

There was a cyclone that killed thousands of people in Myanmar recently. People are still dying or living a life worse than death. I research for hours carefully on relief organizations working to rescue them. I go back and forth with family on how much is a good amount to donate. “50 is enough” “who knows how those organizations will use your donation” “You cant help everyone in the world even if you give away your lifetime’s earnings” “There will be some other crisis tomorrow, what will you do then” “why Myanmar? donate in India. Here too thousands are dying” In the end, I spend half as much as I do on a year’s coffee.

I discovered for myself that I react spontaneously to satisfy my desires. I don’t research a company’s trade policies or their ethical stance before I buy their clothes or shoes. But, when it comes to doing things out of good concern, there is endless discussion on whom to approach and whether it is an endeavor in futility or not. It seems, magnanimity is a trait to be cultivated, so that you react with compassion as spontaneously as you react with desire. How does one cultivate it?

We are seeing an end of a species. There are only 720 mountain gorillas left in the world. It is such a small number that their survival is considered genetically unviable, meaning our kids may not see mountain gorillas in their lifetime. Some of us haven’t even seen one in our lifetime. In ten years they will be gone if something dramatic is not done now.


Civil war in Congo is mainly to blame. As thousands of men and women are losing their lives and their dignity, you would imagine that this dreadful war is affecting only humans, but mountain gorillas and bonobos are being slaughtered mindlessly (even as we speak). Many are being killed systematically, in execution-style. And then there are poachers, illegal timber harvesters and charcoal traders making things worse.

The gorillas live exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Virunga National Park, which is the only park in the world where these gorillas continue to exist.
In 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda, thousands of refugees moved to the Virunga park border, cutting down trees to clear up space to live. Soon they began illegal charcoal production for their everyday needs and to fund the operations of rebel Tutsi fighters. Cutting down of trees and close contact with humans has resulted in the spread of infectious diseases. Several gorillas died as a result. Moreover, the rebels fighting the government have been killing the endangered apes to make a political point, or sometimes out of sheer ignorance of the effects of close contact of humans with apes.

Three issues fight for attention: War among humans, genocide and the extinction of a species.

As the incidences of genocides in the world are growing we are made more and more aware of a basic flaw in our humanity. We cannot relate to mass tragedy. We can act only if we see individuals suffer, like when we see a picture of an orphaned child dying of hunger, or a even an old woman crossing the road. But, somehow we are not able to see individuals within a mass. The more numbers we hear of people suffering, the more paralyzed we become into inaction.

A reporter on NPR pointed out that the death of two gorillas has become bigger news now than the genocide issue or the war in Congo, because with a number as small as two, it is easier for us to feel like we are capable of helping. We react immediately, and want to urge someone to pull the gorillas out of the park and into safety. But the war in congo is barely made known to the world, we too are indifferent to it.

Still the gorillas are dying, the humans are killing each other and destroying everything around them, and there is nothing we can do about the former or the latter. The problems are too big for us. We move on.