by Jurgen Brauer, August 2003
Copyright: J. Brauer. No reproduction without permission.

Liberia, on the west African coast, has been in the news lately. It is rare indeed that the US worries about other people's plight and this causes me to wonder why is it that we are so little concerned about violent conflict in the rest of the world? During the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people were affected by war's ravages in west Africa and millions have died in the eastern Congo in the heart of Africa. Yet depressingly little is done to ease the suffering of the affected people.

Here is a theory that explains our silence, a theory that explains why many millions more will die. The theory is easily understood if you think of your own neighborhood in which you live. Under what conditions will you come to your neighbor's assistance? Five factors come to mind. The first is that there must be considerable noise telling you that something is amiss. This means that you must have credible information. This can be hard to come by. If a man beats his wife or children but you do not hear or see a thing then you do not know that help is needed. You actually have to be a nosy neighbor, participating in the neighborhood gossip, to find out.

Second, the noise in your own home may drown out the voices from abroad. Domestic concerns almost always grab the headlines. Even domestic trivialities are more important than foreign tragedies. Sadly, in terms of local media attention the local high school football score easily beats the millions dying in Africa.

Third, the noise your immediate friends and neighbors make assumes greater importance than the noise more distant neighbors make. In the United States, we pay more attention to what happens with our friends in Europe and Japan and with our next-door neighbors in Mexico and Canada than to what happens in Burma or Paraguay or the Congo or Zimbabwe.

Fourth, the more distant the noise, the less likely are we hear about it. A conflagration two houses down the block will grab our attention more surely than one four or six or eight houses down the block. Thus, the Europeans took far greater note of the Balkan wars of the 1990s than did Americans, and Americans generally take greater note of disturbances in Haiti or Central America than Europeans would.

Fifth, the distance factor can be overcome when relatives of the foreigners live among us. Thus, an influential Jewish community in the United States keeps the Middle East conflagration uppermost in our mind. The attention paid to the northern Ireland conflict, likewise, owed much to the Irish community in the US. If there were four million Burmese or Congolese living here, we would hear much more about the awful conditions in Burma and the Congo.

Note that lack of money does not explain our silence. We always willingly reallocate resources to deal with problems we believe need to be dealt with. I have no problem paying the dentist when the tooth hurts. Not that I'd like the tooth to hurt, but if it has got my attention, attention will be paid.

Note also that it is not lack of humanitarian motives that explains our silence. Americans have never lacked in demonstrating genuine concern and shoving money at problems – once things were perceived as problems to be dealt with.

Note further that it is not lack of political will that explains our silence. Political will is readily mobilized once a problem can be shown to affect us. If the neighbor's ruckus is just too hard to bear for us, we readily mobilize to get rid of the commotion (whether they like it or not).

No, not lack of will, not lack of money, not inhumanity explain our silence. But noise and distance do. It is no coincidence that the thousands of lobbying organizations assembled in Washington, DC, all toe the same line: they raise funds to make noise and vicariously close the distance between their constituents and the US Congress.

Dictators know my theory well. That is why they control the press and impose travel restrictions. No press, no noise; no travel, no closing of distance. My theory works domestically as well. Tens of millions of Americans are undereducated and lack even basic health care services. Millions are in prison, on probation, or on parole. It ought to be a national disgrace to have so many of our fellow citizens be consigned to live lives of liability. But unless indigent care costs spiral out of control, unless the uneducated make it hard for business to find suitable employees, unless crime waves spill from poor to rich neighborhoods, unless, in a word, our attention is grabbed, we do not do a thing, or only very little so.

My theory helps us understand the levers that make for an unfit world. This, in turn, might help us to discover the levers that make for a better world.