I began with this prompt: “Draw an image of a toroid shape lying flat above ground and a meditator sitting in its center.” After repeating the prompt many times over, and experimenting with all sorts of helpful variations in the phrasing, I ended up with the image below. 

It’s not too bad, but definitely not what I was looking for. So I asked it one more time, modifying my instructions. 

Prompt: “This is an image you generated earlier. Please do the same, with the thick circle (toroid) positioned flat a bit above the ground, but move the meditator figure to its center, not in the shadow.” 

ChatGPT proposed this, including the explanation below the illustration:

“Here is the updated illustration with the toroid lying flat slightly above the ground and the meditator positioned in its center, not in the shadow.”

At this point, one could think that ChatGPT had a subconscious, or that it functioned with one of those funky programming languages such as Prolog that don’t contemplate the use of negation. So if I use the word “shadow” there will be a shadow, even if I ask “not in the shadow.” I’m thinking as I speak, or rather as I write. 

As we have noticed before, ChatGPT is very polite and consistently apologizes after every failed attempt. ChatGPT is supernaturally patient as well. Every time I offered a new prompt, it would churn out a new aesthetically pleasant image, communicated with great enthusiasm. The chatbot’s trainers have done a great job in instilling in it a taste for emotional communication. My own patience equalled ChatGPT’s, as I began with a new prompt.

“Let’s try again to create the image as you described, with the toroid lying flat and the meditator in its center. I’ll make sure to adjust the positioning correctly this time.”

“Here’s the corrected image with the toroid lying completely flat on the ground and the meditator in the center. I hope this aligns with your vision this time!”

No, dear presumably intelligent friend, this toroid is not flat, it’s upright. This doesn’t align with my vision. Not even close! I secretly thought that if it were a human, even a five-year-old child with age-appropriate language and drawing skills I would get a better result. 

So here’s the first thing I learned. If we interact with large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence applications as if they were human, it quickly becomes maddening. But it’s our fault. We come with the wrong expectations. These things are not human, and of course, they are not even thinking, not how we do it anyway.

It got the toroid correctly positioned flat above ground before, in the first image above. Why change it?  This will be a question for another time. Apparently, every time I ask to keep everything the same except one detail or object, ChatGPT will change everything. Its mode of operation appears to be linear and not as constructive as it would be if I were working and speaking with a graphic designer.  

Thus I’ve come to realize that the LLM cannot understand or even try to understand what the word “flat” means, at least not in the same way we humans understand it. We can take a word that functions both as a noun and as an adjective and, from the context, figure out which one it is in this specific situation. “Flat,” moreover, can have many different meanings. So why do we spontaneously have a better capacity to interpret words that convey a position in space than any LLM?  It might well be because our brains, as explained by my colleague William Softky, are “incredible at reproducing 3D environments for our survival this ability developed and evolved since the first worm, or the simplest moving animal.”

So I try a geometric description, I imagine giving instructions to a friend who will use something like AutoCad for technical design: “Draw lines from the two farthest points in the circumference of the toroid, there’s an infinite number, those lines create a circular surface, that surface must be placed horizontally such as to be parallel to the horizon and the landscape. Then the meditator must be seated in the middle of this circle as if its circumference were the rim of some big huge bowl (except it has no bottom).”

ChatGPT: “Thank you for clarifying your vision further, emphasizing the horizontal positioning and the landscape context. Let’s adjust the prompt and create the image accordingly, with the toroid fully horizontal and parallel to the horizon, and the meditator centered as you described. I’ll make sure to capture these details correctly this time.”

When the LLM paraphrases my instructions I always get the impression that finally it understands and I’ll get closer to my goal. But behold…

“Here’s the newly generated image, designed to meet your specifications with the toroid completely horizontal and the meditator centered within it. I hope this version matches what you envisioned.”

Can you picture the expression on my face? Now I have to become snarky. Let’s have fun in the face of misery and try the “hangry” bloke description, here: “Think of a pizza, now lay the pizza flat on the ground a huge pizza. Sit the meditator in the middle of the pizza, like a candle on a birthday cake. Then erase all the parts with tomato and pepperoni and leave only the crust of the pizza and the meditator sitting in its middle.”

ChatGPT: “Thanks for the analogy, that really clarifies your vision! I’ll create an image based on your description, with the toroid resembling the crust of a giant flat pizza, and the meditator positioned in the center like a candle on a cake. Here’s to getting it just right this time!”

“Here’s the newly generated image with the toroid depicted as the crust of a giant, flat pizza, and the meditator positioned right in the center. I hope this matches your description accurately this time!”

Let me not bore all our readers with another fifteen tries. As YouTuber Chris “The Brain” suggests in his vlog the biggest problem with AI is that we will all become accustomed to computational and combinatorial rearranging of ideas that already exist, and that appear statistically more often than other less-known ideas because AI is not making up anything new. “The effectiveness of AI comes down to the intelligence that was put into it. At any point in time, AI is more a reflection of our own intelligence, than the computer’s capacity to think.” 

Should we learn to live without true creativity? Sabine Hossenfelder, a professor of quantum physics and scientific popularizer, addresses another intriguing question in her vlog, “Is AI becoming less and less creative?” According to Sabine, there’s a risk that “the more people use AI to produce all sorts of content, the more AI will be fed data that they have produced themselves. What does this mean? Contrary to what one might think, the more AI eats its own produced content the less divergent its production becomes.”

Is this the reason why I am always getting more of the same? 

If you have a point of view on this question, please follow Roberta’s example and share it with us by writing to us dialogue@fairobserver.com . It can be a comment or a full article. We will share your point of view with the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: What Happens When ChatGPT Holds the Pepperoni? appeared first on Fair Observer.

These biases could worsen now that Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party, was elected Prime Minister of Italy in October 2022. Already, Meloni has tightened immigration policies, and her discourse is undeniably protectionist. It is unclear how Meloni’s policies will influence Italians’ perceptions of immigrants, but many fear the worst. 

We sought the insights of Roberto Beneduce on this topic. He has extensively studied the reception and assimilation of migrants. Beneduce also has a clinical practice at the Frantz Fanon Centre where he and his team welcome migrants from many provenances. 

Interview

Roberta Campani: We are interested in Italians’ perceptions of foreigners on their territory. Since you have great experience in reception and accompaniment of immigrants, we would love to have a presentation from you on the current situation.

Roberto Beneduce: The perception of the Italians is certainly oriented by many events and many variables. Italy’s current economic and labor situation has had an impact. Political speeches and media biases have equally decisive weight. It is difficult to imagine a perception that is independent of all this. We have to conceive a model of hybrid, multiple causations to understand this perception…

There are three primary axes influencing Italian perception of immigration.

The first major influencer is misleading political speeches. Many Italian politicians express their desire for a hegemonic culture that representss native Italians. These speeches show a perceptual reality marked by concern for the number of immigrants seeking asylum or arriving on Italian shores through the Balkan route and crossing the Mediterranean 

The concern is emphasized by right-wing political parties to motivate conservative choices when it comes to border control, humanitarian and international protection policies, and the need to tighten regulations surrounding the reception of foreigners. This conservative perception is often reiterated by the media as they intentionally highlight social conflicts between the native population and foreign nationals, competition for job opportunities or access to different resources (housing, for instance) while simultaneously skipping over more positive stories concerning immigration. This media practice acts as confirmation bias for those who wish to deny the realities of immigration. It could be argued that their way of representing the context of migration is an act of “linguistic terrorism,” to quote the words of Ferruccio Rossi Land, an Italian semiotician. 

The second axis influencing Italian perceptions on immigration consists of groups committed to the “humanitarian sector.” These people oppose those who view the flow of immigrants as threatening. They see immigration in relation to the social, economic or war dynamics that are characterizing our present. Italians with this humanitarian perception want to rise up to the demands of asylum seekers and immigrants, and seek to create conditions of encounter rather than conditions of conflict. 

The perception in this second axis doesn’t find immigrants as threatening subjects and adheres to real statistical data instead of inaccurate and inflammatory news stories. People of this perception recognize Italy as a country endowed with resources which, unfortunately, are often not used or are dispersed. 

The bad use of resources concerns the humanitarian sector too. In particular, I am thinking of the chaotic management of contracts entrusted to the nongovernmental organizations that manage immigrants and asylum seekers. These organizations often hire civil servants who have no specific training in humanitarian work, which creates difficulties in communication with new immigrants. There needs to be more careful selection of humanitarian teams based on proven expertise in managing the reception of immigrants, more particularly of those who are affected by specific forms of vulnerability. We also need more forward-looking policies when it comes to welcoming foreign nationals and helping to integrate them into our society. 

Finally, the third axis is the dominant, quieter, more visceral one. Italians with this perception often swing back and forth between humanitarian attitudes and xenophobia. These people often react irrationally to the presence of the Other, the foreigner, perceiving them both as people in need and as threats to native culture.

In this hostile reaction, we recognize two major sociological problems. The first is the systemic racism, the unresolved knot of contemporary democratic societies. We have to recognize that racism permeates not only public opinion, but also institutions, such as schools and healthcare facilities. This institutionalized racism is a huge contributor to the perception of foreigners as a threatening phenomenon. This kind of racism breeds harmful opinions which often manifest as violence, aggression, and acts of humiliation against foreigners. In other words, we cannot forget the structural racism of the nation-state, of the modern State.

That is why I was talking earlier about a real denial of the objective reality when it comes to immigration. We perceive foreigners as threatening and aggressive, but we do not see the violence that is directed at them. We perpetuate narratives where Italians are the victims of conflicts with immigrants. However, it is native citizens who attack, mock, and threaten defenseless or isolated foreigners. 

By an unconscious mechanism of denial, these realities are ignored. When Achille Mbembe speaks of a “society of enmity,” he touches the raw nerve of Europe’s contemporary social structure. Animosity towards foreigners is nurtured by political and economic processes that have their hidden roots in slavery, colonialism, institutional racism and capitalism.

We should consider at length why people care so little to question the systematic and daily racist violence against foreign nationals.

A portion of this violence has resulted in actual deaths. In Italy, as in other countries (Japan, for instance), foreigners are the object of constant aggression by ordinary citizens as well as police forces: the case of death for health problems or suicide in what we call “administrative detention centers” became more and more common in last decades. Despite the nationwide prevalence of these aggressions and this institutional violence, people still refuse to consider the deeper implications behind such acts of violence, and just consider the immigrants and asylum seekers as a threat!

Too often, the legal aggravation of racism in these crimes is the subject of endless negotiations, interpretations, and disputes. True legislative progress is painstakingly slow when it comes to mitigating racism. This is a further issue that should be discussed when trying to understand the nature and reproduction of hostile, negative perceptions of foreigners. 

A Lebanese-born author, Ghassan Hage, used the term “reverse colonization” to describe the anxieties that arise in societies facing immigrants. As their presence grows, foreigners are increasingly perceived as those who could threaten the religious, ethnic, and cultural identity of our countries, as those who are colonizing our Europe. They believe foreigners will take employment opportunities from natives. They fear that the high reproductive rates of migrants could upset imaginary demographic profiles. Here, again, we meet the dark side of Nation-State’s, its projective (delusional) representation of the Other: the reproductive anxiety, the concern for the building of an ideal, ‘good citizen’ and an idealized loyalty to its beliefs, the need for frontiers that bar the route to foreigners… I call this whole “pathologies of citizenships”.

The many forms in which violence can be imagined, practiced, and projected. 

According to Hage, denial is an unconscious mechanism. In the past, slaveholders simply ignored the rape and violence inflicted on slaves but simultaneously feared being the object of such hostile attacks. Today, we tend to deny and erase the violence perpetrated in the past centuries -as well as in the present time- on other populations, other bodies, and other territories.

In other cases, violence takes on an invisible, mundane, but no less perverse character. For example, asylum seekers are subjected to endless queues while waiting for a visa, and they never become full citizens, as the cases analyzed by the Iranian anthropologist Shahram Khosravi well epitomizes (his expression, “stolen time”, summarizes these issues). At the same time, even people living in our countries for many years are often subjected to forms of control and scrutiny of their private life (family, house spaces, and so on), which could be defined as a new, miniaturized panopticon. Xavier Jonathan Inda speaks of “anti-technologies of citizenship” to analyze the current politics of citizenship in the US.

Violence and exploitation have not ended with colonization

The modern exploitation of migrants is no different from the project of European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As some scholars have documented, it is in the literature that sometimes we find the valuable traces of history and “involuntary documents,” as historian Marc Bloch would say, of the violence against the Other.

Marc Bloch was a French historian who argued in his book, The Historian’s Craft, that “involuntary documents” are more credible historical materials than “intentional documents.” Intentional documents, such as official legislative documents, church records, and autobiographies, are often tailored to certain narratives and are limited in the insights they can provide about the past. Bloch believed that involuntary documents, such as letters and drawings, provide more objective and accurate historical insights.

Bringing to light the unconscious dynamics connected to our anxieties and to our reactions to those anxieties is a task as complex as it is urgent: the task of my ethnopsychiatry. Social reform should be made a real field of pedagogical work. We need “social clinics” where experts can help remedy the fears of indigenous communities as they receive more immigrants and asylum seekers.

Unfortunately, widespread racism continues to poison social relations and feed spasms of white supremacy are occurring far too often. All this results in a political class which is not representative of the entire population but however able to impose its hegemonic discourse: the immigrant as a danger. I do not frequently see minorities represented in the Italian political class, nor in that of other European countries.

Roberta Campani: Unfortunately we do not. What you say makes me think of an old reading by Ernesto de Martino, where he says, as early as 1964, that we should introduce Italians to interiority and to everything that is not European or of Judeo-Christian origin. Did this project take place, and has it been developed in one way or another?

Roberto Beneduce: There is a passage that Ernesto de Martino reaffirms in many of his writings. It is what he calls “non-bourgeois ethnology.” De Martino’s interest in anthropology did not arise from a mere attraction to the exotic world. In our writing of history, and in our process of giving meaning to history, a thread was missing. 

Ernesto De Martino used this expression to describe the missing link: the thread of the primitive. He believed that it was necessary to take up this thread again in order to recognize its role in history as it had been written, but also in our modern world and societies. For a scholar of social sciences, the incessant re-emergence of primitive, barbaric, and archaic practices in our societies, laws, and institutions constitutes a decisive theme. We meet here even the strong influence of Gramsci on de Martino’s thought.

It would take little effort to show how our discourses often trivialize the presence of irrational thinking in the societies of Italy, Germany, and France. Not all are protected from this re-emergence of irrational terrors and violence, which often has its target in the “Other.” 

De Martino said that not only should this “missing thread” be analyzed historically, but it should also be recognized within our modern societies. An essay from one of De Martino’s most intriguing books, Furore, Simbolo e Valore (1962), addresses the threats of witchcraft in 1950s Germany. 

Those pages are valuable, as they depict a German professor knocking on De Martino’s door and bringing him the dossier of a witchcraft trial in Germany, the same Germany that had just come out of another witchcraft, another barbarism. In Italy and around the globe, we have to deal with these shadows, these dark whirlpools of the irrational. From the “neo-shamanism” that fueled the 6 January capitol riots in Washington D.C., to the satanic sects in Italy or in other Western countries, we must recognize that barbarism is something from which we modern humans are not spared.

When we refuse to recognize the presence of the “primitive thread”, and of the barbarism in ourselves, we end up projecting it onto the Other﹣the foreigner﹣ who, for many, continues to embody the negative, the threat, the obscure (bad motherhood, bad families, sexual promiscuity, bad manners…). 

These issues require urgent joint reflection among researchers, intellectuals, and the political class.Unfortunately, this kind of collaboration is largely absent today. In fact, there seemed to be more articulation between the political and intellectual classes in past years. 

Roberta Campani: When did this regression begin? Within the last two decades?

Roberto Beneduce: It began during the late 1980s and the 1990s. At the end of the Cold War, a radical crisis affected both communism and revolutionary theorists. Intellectuals from both spheres were left speechless and without direction. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall is a perfect example, as it marked the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a crisis within communism. After the Cold War, many intellectuals failed to find adequate categories to understand the complexities of the advancing times. They ended up overlooking the fact that violence quietly inhabited the core of both the socialist state and the capitalist state.They couldn’t take on the task of re-thinking articulations of power at a sufficient level of complexity. This contributed, at least from the standpoint of intellectuals, to the loss of thrust in the possibility of influencing future political choices. 

Neoliberalism, on the other hand, does not require critical thinking. Neoliberalism needs a subjugated public opinion that believes in an unregulated economy and limitless consumption. A hoard of consumers bends to the image of progress, reaching for the utopian promise of being able to indulge any desire at any moment in time. 

By gently imposing the desire to consume to the point that the current economic model is the only thinkable one, neoliberalism has achieved great success. However, when critical thinking arises, neoliberalism also reacts violently..

Indeed, we see how movements fueled by critical thinking are now often criminalized and repressed (what is happening in France is an exemplary witness of this). The need to decolonize our categories of analysis, and our own desires, the cogent need to invent new models, as Frantz Fanon had already indicated referring to colonial societies, continues to be a priority of our present.

Frantz Fanon was a Martinican psychiatrist who studied in France. He was active in the liberation front in Algeria and theorized violence as a necessary way out of colonialism. His theory of decolonization maintains that “all of us are entitled to moral consideration” and that “no one is dispensable.” Fanon’s assertions about human rights continue to inspire activists and scholars dedicated to social justice today.

Can a population, a country, learn to accept and accommodate this contradiction? How? 

Roberta Campani: Let us return to perceptions of foreigners in Italy. Can we think of something to reconstruct the bond between intellectuals, ordinary citizens, and political figures? Could something similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission be realized?

Roberto Beneduce: Undoubtedly, researchers who do not isolate in laboratories and in their own theoretical models are led to dialogue, listening, and the acceptance of contradiction. This is also what I try to convey to my students. 

Therein also lies the meaning of a discipline such as anthropology. On the one hand, the anthropologist studies these contradictions to bring light to these shadowy areas. On the other hand, a good enough anthropologist does not stop questioning the meaning behind these contradictory trends. Among these issues, the old question arises: Why do disadvantaged groups continue to pursue political projects that often go precisely against their interests and goals for society? 

Many experts theorize that no one is spared from the temptation and the responsibility of violence. Reconciliation is a process, one that cannot be completed in a short time period. It is a process that requires great patience and long-term commitment.

No authentic theoretical reflection could believe that it is possible to complete the complex process of reconciliation in ten years or less. Reconciliation is an infinite process that can facilitate dialogues with even the most beaten-up and belittled groups. Among those who are isolated and marginalized within our social landscape, one finds that the most enlightened figures too often stay silent in the face of such archaic and deeply ingrained social structures. This is what I recorded and understood these past years. 

Contradiction and conflict are part of the reality of every human group of every epoch (this is Balandier’s perspective, which I make my own). When one fails to acknowledge this, the inevitable effect is that the poles of institutional operation, the social, and the intellectual, move further away from one another. This centrifugal dynamic is good for neoliberalism because it allows it to operate with maximum freedom, ignoring the needs of individuals and local communities. 

Consider this example: the dynamic that pits the right to healthcare and nutrition against the need to work to afford basic necessities. Those who want to defend the well-being of the environment in which they live will then often find themselves in conflict with those that just look for work. This fracture, as I observed in my fieldwork, can occur within their own families and communities, because despite their personal beliefs, the need to work and industrialize will always be imperative. 

Neoliberalism plays into this contradiction. We have seen it in Italy in the case of the oil drilling in Basilicata region of Italy or industry in Taranto. We also see it in Rosignano with the pollution of the Solvay beaches. We saw the same ferocious contradiction in Japan, where Chisso factory gave job opportunities and promoted ‘progress’ while killing and poisoning land, human beings and animals by mercure as the woefully well-known case of Minamata disease demonstrated. There are an infinite number of situations in which the right to health and ecological well-being is dramatically opposed to the demands of work and industrialization.

This contradiction is a metaphor that can be instructive to other fields as well. For example, if I, as an expert in the reception and integration of immigrants, cannot make it clear to natives that foreigners do not create economic competition for social aid or housing, do not introduce new diseases or political threats, then I have mistaken my discourse, my analysis. 

Another example of these conflicts is the unlawful eviction of Romani immigrants in 2018. The establishment of immigrant housing in the area caused entire neighborhoods to explode, with some citizens even resorting to violent actions. Eventually, the immigrants were forced to give up their assigned homes. A typical expression of the struggle between the poor…

The fact that the institutions, experts, and social workers did not foresee these conflicts is shameful. Afterwards, they admitted their powerlessness by allowing these expressions of violence and racism to prevail over the law. This event is one of the darkest images of the defeat when it comes to the law and the principle of coexistence. Housing is needed by everyone, including natives. The fact that virtuous complicity cannot be created among even the most marginal sectors is a huge problem. 

If the choice is between work and health, between environment and salary, we have already failed. If one has to choose between providing housing for a foreign family or for a native family, between two kinds of poor, we have already failed. The weighing of rights against one another is a dichotomous logic that is properly lethal. I have even heard health workers say that “first, our citizens should be treated. Then, and only then, should foreigners receive care.” 

To passively accept these drifts is to allow oneself to drift dangerously. Unfortunately, hegemonic discourses help reproduce negative perceptions of the Other. This is certainly a dramatic problem of our time.
Hannah Gage edited this piece.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Latest ‘Invasion’ of Italy: Are Immigrants Really That Scary? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Should We Now Have the Right to Die?

It should be noted that, in Swiss law, there’s an important distinction between assisted suicide and euthanasia. Assisted suicide is a privilege enacted by proxy. If the person, who expressly wants to end his/her life, cannot do it themselves, they can get help from an organization. These organizations train volunteers who can access the necessary medication to put an end to the person’s suffering. This person who has chosen to end his/her life then takes this medication voluntarily without any assistance.

In contrast to assisted suicide, Swiss law considers euthanasia a particular kind of murder. There is a specific case in which a Swiss doctor has been brought to trial on charges of euthanasia while practicing assisted suicide. The court acquitted the doctor because the patient had not only asked to be delivered of her suffering various months if not years earlier, but also at a later stage her neurological disease had spread too far, and she could only barely move one foot at the set date; hence the doctor held the glass and gave her the drink when she moved her foot as a sign. The judges considered that it would have been cruel to deny her a dignified death simply because, on that day, she could not move her arm, and this after years of battling her illness. 

One day A-L felt ready.

As a family we made a rendezvous, and on a set day, early in the morning, the lady who had interviewed everyone, came to the house. She asked when and how this would happen. We all gathered in the grandmother’s room and greeted each other. The volunteer explained that she was preparing the beverage and took a glass of water where she put the medication. Then she offered a piece of chocolate and an antiemetic pill to chew so the medication wouldn’t taste too sour nor would it be rejected.

When A-L felt ready, she took the glass from the volunteer’s hand and looked around the room. I don’t remember what she said exactly, but she feebly waved her other hand and drank a few sips. 

A few minutes later, she closed her eyes, and her breathing became shallow and slowed down. 

She passed peacefully on the morning of August 11, 2020 in her bed, surrounded by her daughter, the daughter’s partner, her partner, myself, and the volunteer from Exit. 

The “accompagnatrice” called the police and the funeral home, which she had previously warned. When our children, 9, 12 and 22 years old at the time, came back home after spending the night at their older sister’s house, the police had already interviewed us and taken all the essential documents. The corpse had been taken to the morgue. 

Most people present at her departure felt relief, even if there was indeed some sadness. Peace and serenity remained floating around for a while, with a sense of “je ne sais quoi.” We organized a ceremony according to her wishes and the local law about a week later in the city’s cemetery. She had chosen classical music and cremation just like her husband who went through the assisted suicide process before her. After the ceremony, we all had an aperitivo with a glass of white wine, which A-L had enjoyed throughout her life.

Is assisted suicide a form of negligent humanism?

According to the French ex-Dominican friar, now an Orthodox theologian and author Jean-Yves Leloup, (Ars Moriendi, 1986 and Les Livres des morts, Tibétain, Egyptien, Chrétien, 2009), there are four main ways to approach death. 

The first one, in Buddhism and the Qohélet in the Jewish library, considers suffering, illness and death more or less as illusions. All three phenomena pertain to the self. 

The second attitude, found in Hinduism and a few other traditions, considers pleasure, suffering, illness, and death as epiphenomena in a chain of causes and effects. They are all a part of a larger cosmic cycle.

The third attitude, which interests us here, says Leloup in his introduction, “is found in various forms of atheist humanism, traditional or contemporary, a familiar attitude in the West; in this context, suffering, illness, and death are a scandalous thing, one must preserve oneself and deliver oneself at all costs, death is the end, it’s considered as absolutely mortal, it is the interruption of  biophysical or neurophysiological functions; there is nothing else than this aleatory interrelation of atoms and the ‘no-rules’ game of our synapses.” 

Finally, the fourth attitude comes from monotheistic religions, which consider suffering and death as passages, a time of trial to which and from which one can give and take meaning and learning.

Leloup’s book is fascinating because it shines the light on a number of relatively less known traditions. The book contains a collection of translations of the Bardo and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. 

Yet this book is still Christian in its ethos. Life is sacred as expounded both by the Catholic Church and the Evengelicals. These Christian institutions have deep theological differences but are united in their opposition of abortion and assisted suicide. Hence, Leloup’s description of “atheist humanism” as an anguished knee-jerk reaction to a scandal (death and suffering) appears extreme. 

Leloup’s characterization of assisted suicide as negligent humanism is judgmental. Others have also opposed this practice. In fact, many atheist or agnostic authors consider it wrong on other grounds. As a devout Christian, Leloup implies that there can neither be ethics outside of religious beliefs, nor spirituality outside of institutionalized religion.

Leloup forgets that we can care for our community and living space without the narrative construction of submitting to a higher power. He overlooks a key question entirely: do we really need a religious framework to care for each other? Communities and groups have developed a variety of ways to cope with grief and fear of death and not all of these implicate an organized religion. 

The ancient Stoics, whom Leloup also quotes, say, “As long as we are alive we can’t speak about it, and when we’re dead we won’t be here to speak about it.” steer away completely from speaking about death. There were philosophers in India, China and elsewhere who also did the same. Charvaka and Xunzi did not dwell too much on death and had a radically different view of life than that of monotheistic Abrahamic traditions. How can we say with certainty as to who is right and who is wrong?

What is death after all, and how about bereavement and grieving? 

Speaking of death, we can’t forget to mention the influential Philippe Ariès. A French historian, with an atypical background, Ariès dedicated a large part of his life to the study of attitudes toward death in the history of the Western World. He examined death not as a physical or physiological fact but as a significant sociological phenomenon heavily charged with symbolic meaning. 

Ariès’s work reads the social, physiological and psychological mutations that occurred in Western society from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. He claims that there isn’t a radical rupture between the more ancient attitude that viewed death as a part of life and more recent attitudes. In not so distant times, in fact until around World War I, death was accepted socially as a collective destiny to be addressed by the community and people were prepared for it.

Slowly—along the centuries—the process of isolation of the individual gathered pace, at least in western Judeo-Christian societies. The modern attitude that associates death with solitude, fear and even shame came later.

It might be hard to believe today that death was accepted and even ennobled for many centuries. Now it is hidden and feared, which can, in part, explain what Leloup tried to convey in his moralizing argument. In the leisure world and in cinema, brutal death is now made into an exciting spectacle, and even depersonalized. This shift, according to Ariès, happened slowly, over centuries. 

Ariès explains and demonstrates that the persistence of post-death and bereavement rituals over a very long time make it difficult for any historian to chronicle changes in attitudes about death. The relatively new practice of assisted suicide brings “disturbance” to the traditional order. This phenomenon might be a symptom of things changing at a much larger scale than any religious tradition has countenanced.

A personal reflection on watching assisted suicide

If you have made it this far into the article, you might want to know my personal opinion on assisted suicide. I am agnostic on this phenomenon. 

In the most literal sense, we cannot know nor prove that a god or any other “supreme being” does or does not exist. Therefore, I suspend cognition (a-gnosis). This argument is also usually transferred to the domain of belief by believers and theologians, which for me is clearly distinct from knowledge. However, both domains, belief and knowledge, can be studied through a constructivist—where people experience the world and reflect upon those experiences to create knowledge—lens. 

The whole discussion on the existence or non-existence of a god, or gods, from this perspective, reveals itself as probably not much more than an interesting intellectual exercise. It does not help me with daily life. For me, the theological intellectual exercise about god per se is a waste of time and energy.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t shun spirituality nor disrespect religions. I simply believe that too often religions don’t really help. Instead, they complicate things and increase suffering. If we want to take care of people and the things around us, we need a pragmatic approach. This pragmatism, which I expressed on some occasions, has been decried alternately as “not grateful” or anti-religious and, at other times, similar to the Buddha’s attitude because in his speeches, he never really mentions the existence of gods or a god. 

The pain of ill people and the loneliness of the elderly are real phenomena that we have to address. The pain and suffering of their close ones, family and friends, and lovers are also real phenomena. Let’s take care of these phenomena, let us care for the living, the suffering and the bereaving. Let us not make the pain go on forever on the grounds that destiny, god, or any other entity that is supposedly telling us what to do or not to do. We have no idea, and no way to know what lies beyond.

Let me finish with a mourning chant from southern Italy from a precious anthropological document by Cecilia Mangini. Here women cry and scream and shake out all their suffering at the death of a young man, who was only 16 years old. These songs express pain, grief, and hope at many levels. Later, the men carry out the coffin and accompany it to the cemetery for burial. 

Farewell A-L.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Important Difference Between Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia appeared first on Fair Observer.

Not that the law does not explicitly allow assisted suicide, but Article 115 of the Swiss Penal Code states that assisted suicide without self-interested motivation is not a crime. This means that if the person assisting the suicide is not doing it for her or his benefit, then she or he is not committing a crime.

I will explore the case of A-L to elucidate the Swiss position on assisted suicide. She was a real-life example of someone who wants to end her life surrounded by her loved ones. 

A-L was 83 years old. She was the mother of two and the grandmother of three—my own two children and their older step-sister. A-L had been a physician since the late 1950s, specializing in children’s psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Until well into her 70s, she was an active member of the local psychoanalytical society, where she tutored numerous new psychoanalysts. Many of them remember her as a great teacher. 

By 83, A-L was suffering from bone cancer. She had suffered breast cancer in her 40s. Perhaps the cancer returned after a few decades. A-L feared the onset of dementia, which afflicted her father and one of her brothers. She regularly spent weeks or months in hospitals. Her bones had turned brittle and broke easily. She should have been walking with a cane but complained  “it got in the way.”

A-L wrote to an organization in her home canton of Geneva in Switzerland named Exit, asking for help. She hoped to end her life with dignity.

Death with dignity is a privilege, not a flawed liberal law. 

In Switzerland, both the law and the relationship citizens have with institutions are very close and open. Many decisions and even paradigmatic changes are bottom-up rather than top-down, following well-established social and cultural practices. In theory at least, nothing is sacred. Everything can be openly criticized through referenda or popular initiatives. The downside is that any change takes a very long time to take place. Remember that Swiss women earned the right to vote only in 1971. Some characterize our political landscape as boring. We do not dramatize politicians’ deeds and tribulations as much as other countries. Some of our federal counselors go to work on a bicycle or using public transport.  

Still, aging and illness are present in every society. Every year, more than 1,000 people request the help of a few organizations to end their lives. The Federal Council and the parliament avoided clearly defining a law on assisted suicide in 2011 and 2012. They support mental health care, palliative end-of-life care and suicide prevention but consider that Swiss law and customs already provide enough elements to avoid abuses. The Federal Tribunal’s judges stand their ground despite the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg suggesting that the Swiss make the laws more explicit. 

In many ways, assisted suicide is an astonishing practice, counterintuitive for some and appalling for others. Swiss citizens mostly see it as humanistic, even humane, meaning it respects the human person. In this country, being “liberal” doesn’t necessarily mean seeing every individual as an island. Community ties are strong and cross many different domains, including one’s church or a section of the Alpine Club. Grassroot organizations are an integral part of the political and social landscape. 

Recently, Swiss-French Film director Jean-Luc Godard chose death with dignity, and it made the headlines in France and elsewhere. This led French President Emmanuel Macron to relaunch the debate on a new law for France in September 2022. This law would make assisted suicide a possibility. Many other cases of citizens asking for an amendment to the interdiction against assisted suicide have made the headlines in the past two decades. Some, from as far away as Australia — such as David Godall, a 104 year-old scientist — have traveled to Switzerland to access the privilege of a death in dignity.

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How does it happen

A-L’s daughter initially did not like the idea of her mother choosing assisted suicide. Still, after about a year and some conversations with her mother and her partner who was a retired physician, the daughter accepted the idea. A-L’s son, my partner, agreed with his mother’s decision from the beginning. She had gotten into the habit of spending time alone and sometimes with her companion whom she met after her husband passed away. On several occasions, we had to call the police to break in and see how she was doing in her apartment, as she could not reach the door or answer her phone. 

We were not surprised when A-L announced her will to die in dignity. In the months following her demand, her health kept degrading. In the end, we took her into our home and made arrangements for nurses to see her in the mornings and evenings. We didn’t know for how long and what kind of engagement her stay would become. During the spring of 2020, her health deteriorated again after a fall and a long stay in the hospital. When she returned home, A-L rested for a couple of weeks and decided to go forward with her plan to end her life. 

She called the association’s volunteer and said she was ready. 

An indefensible practice or the privilege of the ultimate choice?

Some detractors or adversaries find assisted suicide indefensible. They accuse Switzerland and other “liberal” countries of negligence. The long history and the genesis of the Swiss Penal Code gives us clues as to the country’s cultural mindset. Alex Mauron, a professor of ethics at the University of Geneva, did a brilliant summary of the genesis of article 115 of the penal code, which was drafted during the second half of the 19th century but only enforced in 1937. The drafting was a painstaking deliberative exercise that was interrupted by World War I. Eventually, the consensual Swiss society came to accept the penal code  and even embraced death with dignity. 

In Christian Europe, suicide of any form was abhorred. Life is considered sacred. It is for this reason the Catholic Church still opposes abortion and even contraception. For centuries, anyone who committed suicide was denied burial in a church graveyard. Both l’ancien regime and the legendary French revolutionaries of 1789, prohibited suicide. It was considered a crime.

The Enlightenment questioned established values. The injunction against suicide gradually weakened. In the 19th century, suicide was decriminalized. Swiss legislators asked: if suicide was not a criminal act then could assisted suicide be acceptable as well? 

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Eventually, legislators came to the view that if the person assisting suicide had nothing to gain from the dying person’s death, then she or he was not committing a crime. Over time, assisted suicide has become an accepted practice in Switzerland. This is not to say everyone agrees with this practice. Healthcare professionals continue to question it.

The Académie Suisse des Sciences Médicales applies stricter criteria than those of civil society organizations that practice assisted suicide. Note that euthanasia is forbidden in the Swiss Penal Code. Article 114 clearly states: “Any person who for commendable motives, and in particular out of compassion for the victim, causes the death of a person at that person’s own genuine and insistent request shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty.” 

As stated earlier, A-L had stage IV terminal bone cancer and various other ailments due to her age. When she decided upon assisted suicide, she wrote to Exit and became a member of the association. The organization asked A-L for her entire medical history. They examined all relevant documents and conducted a medical examination. A-L also had to write a letter by hand explicitly explaining her motivations.

A couple of weeks later, Exit sent a trained volunteer to speak with A-L and interview close family members to assess the situation. Once her demand had been approved, A-L could wait until she felt ready. This eased her anxiety to some degree. Her late husband MR had already chosen death with dignity five years earlier. He handled things independently, didn’t ask anyone, and only informed everyone in his usual matter-of-fact manner when everything was already decided. He was also a physician and a psychoanalyst. 

Jean-Jacques Bise, the co-president of the Association for Death with Dignity known as Exit, states that people who apply for assisted suicide and are accepted often “calm down” and don’t get back to Exit for quite some time. He reckons that the possibility of choosing one’s death to be a peaceful one surrounded by those one feels safe with can make the end of life more serene.

The picture that Bise paints is best captured in the documentaryLe Choix de Jean (2005). We see a middle-aged Swiss man from the canton of Fribourg who has chosen assisted suicide after a long and sadly fruitless battle with brain cancer. This long-suffering man says that he fears collapsing on the street among strangers. Instead, he would much rather die in his bed in the presence of his wife before life becomes too hard for both of them. His wife says that she would support whatever he chooses. Choice in Switzerland in life and to end life is accepted both socially and legally.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Should We Now Have the Right to Die? appeared first on Fair Observer.

For the last 70 years, Tibet has been under China’s thumb even as Hollywood stars swoon at the Dalai Lama’s feet. Many people think of Tibet as a separate nation with a definable history and a specific cultural identity symbolized by the Dalai Lama. Many are unaware of Tibet’s integration into China and its political subjugation by Beijing. In September 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear that Tibet was an integral part of China’s “impregnable fortress” as he decried the heresy of “splittism.” The fate of Tibet shines light on a key issue: can political entities bordering a hegemon exercise sovereignty?

We are living in a world where the 1945 postwar order is ending. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been followed by a bloody war between its two biggest successor states. Oil prices are soaring and inflation is skyrocketing. Fertilizers and food are in short supply because the two big exporters Russia and Ukraine are at war. So, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and many other countries could soon be short of bread, if not oil. 

As the current world order breaks down, what will emerge in its place? Will we see a more fragmented world with regional hegemons competing in their spheres of influence? Or will we see a more multipolar world where dispersed power centers will realize there is no way to survive other than mutual respect and creative collaboration?

I spoke to writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue on a range of issues, spanning from his experience as a Tibetan in India to the state of our modern world. 

The transcript has been edited for clarity. Words in brackets are my insertions to provide context and clarity to Tsundue’s words.

Roberta Campani: How do the Tibetans live in India? 

Tenzin Tsundue: There are about 100,000 Tibetan refugees in India, of which three generations are represented: those who left Tibet (as Tsundue’s parents did), their children who are now adults (like Tsundue) and a third generation (children of Tsundue’s generation) who no longer have direct ties to Tibet. There’s also another group, those who came out of Tibet later on, in the early 2000s and up to 2009 and then it became almost impossible to get out of occupied Tibet. There’s a law in India as per which someone who was born prior to 1987 in the country is a citizen regardless of the origin of their parents. (Yet most Tibetans have not applied for citizenship to avoid weakening the Free Tibet Movement.) Like other refugees, Tibetans cannot own property nor vote. In fact, Tibetans don’t even have refugee status because India, like most modern nations, does not recognize Tibet as a state or country. 

We are considered foreigners, we have to get a document that lasts one year. This makes it hard to plan long-term, build a house or start a family. Some can get the document extended for five years. But it is hard not to have any stability. On the other hand, the positive side of this situation is that it maintains the impetus to keep working towards going back to our homeland.

Even if India granted us 43 settlements where we have built farms, hospitals, and schools where we are self-subsistent, this was a lot of work. And now the young go to cities and have jobs in IT.

Tibet is known for being the home country of Tenzin Gyatso, now known as the Dalai Lama. He is recognized both as a spiritual and political leader. In 2011, the Dalai Lama gave up his political role and passed it on to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). 

The CTA was formed in 1959. Some consider it a government in exile. The Dalai Lama’s handing over power to the CTA is historic. He wants Tibetans and Tibet to function democratically. The Sikyong, a figure analogous to a prime minister, and a parliament is elected every five years. 

Apart from 100,000 Tibetans in India, there are another 50,000 in other countries. All of them can elect members of the parliament and participate in activities of the CTA.

Roberta Campani: What can this impetus achieve given the current situation in China?

Tenzin Tsundue: China looks at Tibetan culture and religion as the biggest obstacle to assimilation. The Chinese want to homogenize Tibet and reduce it into Beijing’s backyard. They see that Tibetans are united over their cause. They are also united with Tibetans in exile.

Tibetan culture is very different from Chinese culture. China believes in bombing mountains, making money out of Tibetan minerals and resources, and damming rivers. In contrast, Tibetans believe that there are gods and goddesses in the mountains, and they are sacred for our living. Our environment is not to serve us. We are part of the environment. Philosophically, we look at land and resources very differently from the Chinese. They also look at people as resources to make them do cheap labor and make money for the capitalists. That is not how we look at life. Tibetan nomads and farmers are “rehabilitated” in reservations, kind of artificial villages so they lose touch and connection with their own land.

Tibet lies north of the Himalayas. It is a large high-altitude plateau inhabited largely by Buddhists who brave bitter winters and lead largely simple lives. Known as the roof of the world, historians speak of a geographical Tibet and a political Tibet. There is also a cultural Tibet associated with meditation, spirituality, esoteric practices, mystique and, in our Hollywoodish times, personified by the beatific Dalai Lama.

In May 1951, the Dalai Lama’s envoys were forced to sign a Seventeen Point Agreement with the Chinese. For the first time, an agreement formally recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. This agreement, though, was signed to avoid a brutal military invasion by the Chinese. Beijing has always claimed Tibet to be an autonomous region belonging to the Chinese nation.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that it has brought progress to benighted and feudal Tibet. The CCP says that it has bettered the lives of ordinary Tibetans by bringing modern technology and economic growth. The question arises whether this progress was worth it given the decimation of Tibetan culture and the destruction of Tibet’s once pristine environment.

Roberta Campani: Can you give us some background about what brought the situation to this point?

Tenzin Tsundue: Tibet had been a free and independent country right from the beginning until China’s invasion in 1951. What is called the western romanticization of Shangri-La is Tibet — 2.5 million square kilometers of land, geographically the biggest and highest plateau in the world. Tibetans have lived in isolation, untouched by western influences  — they have hardly had any relationship with many other countries. Of course, Tibet had relationships with Mongolia in the north, China in the east, India to the south and by extension with other South Asian countries, like Nepal, Burma, Bhutan and Pakistan. And that’s how Tibet lived as an independent country for all these thousands of years. 

And this isolation has also created this very unique language, culture, and identity. In the last 2,000 years, we have received Buddhism from India. It wasn’t Tibetan, it came from India and today, we are keeping that and Buddhism has become the primary identity for Tibetan people. And that’s how we have lived as a free and independent country and that is still existing today.

The Tibetans inside Tibet that are fighting the Chinese attempt to 1. homogenize, and 2. to use Tibet as a colony, which the Chinese mine and make money off. The reason why Tibetans have not been co-opted by Chinese mining and industrialization is because Tibetans have a very different idea of natural resources and the environment and that is a part of Tibetan identity. We look at nature as a larger universe where human beings are part of. We are servants to nature.

This identity comes from a much larger picture of the Tibetan civilization. That civilization, what we are getting to see, is something many countries have lost. We have not. Our Tibetans in Tibet still believe that the country is more important than the people. We are part of the environment. So the continuity of tradition that we are seeing resists the damming of rivers, mining for resources and clear felling of trees in order to make money through all the cheap made in China products.

China is mining and taking all of these natural resources —  lithium, copper, and gold — to make cheap products for the world. See, how China looks at natural resources is very different to Tibet. The China that is emerging today is not even the China of Deng Xiaoping or of Mao Zedong. China has completed a cultural revolution in so many different phases. So many times, China has completely changed. Tibet may have modernized in different ways, but as a civilization, we are continuous.

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Roberta Campani: It seems that this view makes even more sense now that we have climate issues: how could your experience be made useful for the world in general?

Tenzin Tsundue: I don’t want to be condescending by saying we have the best ideas for the world to copy. We will continue our religion, our culture, we have our very unique civilizational beliefs, and if the world, if the international community see that this is of value, they will anyhow take it. 

Roberta Campani: Do you think there is something positive in the “common prosperity” doctrine that China has brought forward these past few years? In particular, if we consider that inequalities and the wider income gap are creating discontent in most of the traditionally democratic countries. 

Tenzin Tsundue: You and I know it very well, it’s all optics. It’s what political parties create to fulfill their own self-interest, like Trump tried to create something for America while pursuing his own interest and Biden is now trying to do that today. The same goes for the propaganda war between Zelensky and Putin. All these optics are for consumption and you cannot just blindly consume that. When China says that it is creating a more equal society by getting rid of the gap between the rich and the poor, we understand it very well. These are political agendas and not social services. 

And as I said earlier, homogenization means that China already has what it calls the Chinese identity and Beijing is trying to impose that on the rest of the people. Homogenization does not mean there is no culture. There is a culture but it’s the majority culture that they are trying to impose on the minorities or the people that are living under China’s occupation. That is homogenization and this is the biggest threat that is happening in Eastern Turkestan, southern Mongolia, and in Manchuria. And the same thing is happening in Hong Kong.

And there is a threat that China may physically, and militarily invade Taiwan in the future. So this homogenization is the main factor why Hong Kong didn’t want to become completely Chinese because the Hong Kong people have their own identity, a social and a cultural tradition there. And they say “we are not like the Chinese in mainland China.” So you see, the Hong Kong people resist because they don’t want to homogenize. They don’t want to be turned into a Chinese backyard.

Of course, physically, Hong Kong is a part of the People’s Republic of China. Still, they have lived separately for almost one or two hundred years. They have their ideas, identity, ways of living, and culture. It’s much more vibrant and democratic there. Now, they are being homogenized. And the international community did not care much about losing Hong Kong.

Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong are not legally recognized as sovereign states. Therefore, other states and the so-called international community cannot take a clear position on them. However, these three geographical and political entities are increasingly in the news.

According to Professor Yeshi Choedon, “Tibet has been an international issue since the 1950s but no serious attempt has been made to address this problem on the main pretext that the status of Tibet was not clear. The lack of clarity on the status of Tibet is not just because of manipulation by the Chinese. The major contributing factor, in fact, was Tibet’s own failure to move along with the tide of the change that was sweeping the world in the 20^th century.”

As per Michael van Walt, lawyer and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton:  “From a legal standpoint, Tibet has to this day not lost its statehood. It is an independent state under illegal occupation.”  

Roberta Campani: What are your thoughts about how the situation could unfold for Tibet? 

Tenzin Tsundue: Today there are many possibilities. I think that the 63 years of exile experience have given us enough sense of resilience and understanding of the world’s political scenario and our own existence. The early shock we got after coming out of Tibet to the outside world where there were already so many scientific advances. For example, when my parents came to India, they were unable to understand what is a bus, what is a car and what is a train. From there we have come to a situation where the third generation is working in IT companies in India. 

So you see this fast-forward advance and experience has given us the understanding that ultimately our freedom struggle is something we have to do ourselves. And we have created enough cultural resistance and even resilience that even if no one helps us today we are still able to maintain our resistance and we’ll come to a point when China collapses we will go back to our country and we will re-establish a free, independent, democratic Tibet. This much confidence is what we have now.

Today, the Tibetan issue is not isolated. More than ever, the issue of the Dalai Lama, who is the reincarnation (of his predecessor), is now more useful to the United States, to the European countries and to India because China has now evolved from a communist country to an industrial nation and a superpower. China is today a threat to the western countries, India, and many other countries that need to tackle China. Now, we have to work with these other countries that might find the issues of Tibet useful to their causes.

Roberta Campani: How could this happen?

Tenzin Tsundue: Look, when we were protesting in 2008, we were saying that China is killing Tibetans and that there is a genocide happening in Tibet, no one cared. Everyone went to participate in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

This year too, in 2022, when the Winter Olympics are happening, suddenly the United States realizes that there are human rights issues with China. That does not mean that they did not know about human rights violations in Tibet and East Turkestan in 2008. This year, 15 countries boycotted — a diplomatic boycott —  these countries are now finding these issues useful for them against China.

This is the understanding we are now getting as Tibetan refugees. Earlier, Tibetans were nothing —  oh, these are just nice, good, goodie people — and the Dalai Lama is non-violent. Now they find the issue of Tibet politically useful. So, how do we have to position ourselves with countries that want to deal with China differently? Are we able to do it? Perhaps, we can even work with China’s pro-democracy activists who would want to see their country as a democracy.

Tibet: A Nonviolent History of War

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Roberta Campani: Are you in touch with people in China who want democracy? 

Tenzin Tsundue: Of course, we are in touch with them but they were themselves persecuted in China and they are now living in foreign countries. 

Roberta Campani: How could this experience that has given you and the Tibetan communities skills and consciousness be helpful? How can you use that experience to raise awareness about other refugees, as it’s a problem all over the world?

Tenzin Tsundue: It is not that the West doesn’t know. It is pretending not to know because its interests up until today have been more into trading with China and not with promoting human rights. We are very well aware of this. As much as we would like to work with western countries on human rights and democracy in China and also freedom for Tibet, we are also aware that the West may be using Tibet today. We would like to work with western countries for democracy in China and freedom in Tibet. 

Roberta Campani: Do you know there is a fascination with Tibetan culture that is actually not so well known?

Tenzin Tsundue: I am not surprised. The consumerism that has taken over the world has, in a way, homogenized entire production units that have centered on easy production. This has come about with big international corporate companies as producers and the rest of the people are just consumers. This model is a danger to the environment and also to human civilization. (That is why there may be a fascination for Tibetan culture.)

Roberta Campani: What is the mission or role that you have chosen? 

Tenzin Tsundue: I am a small activist based here in India. The role I have assigned to myself is that of a writer, I look at certain changing aspects in the Tibetan community, culturally and emotionally, and I write about these aspects. Also, as an activist, an important part of my role is to keep the freedom struggle going, maintaining the restlessness in the movement. And also come up with new ideas on how to deal with the changing political situation in the world and how to guard against certain threats, and, at the same time, look at opportunities that might appear.

So, mine is a very small role. Still, I see it in the larger picture. There is the Tibetan government in exile, there is His Holiness the Dalai Lama, there are members of parliament, there are many other leaders, and as an activist and as a writer, I also play my small role. But in the larger picture, I see that the Tibetan freedom movement up until now has been inspiring both for the international community and us because we have maintained nonviolence as the main thrust of our movement led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. 

This has inspired many individuals, people in the West, in India and in many other places. They say that this is one peaceful community and a movement that they would like to support, and of course, we have a huge number of sympathizers and supporters, which is how we have maintained the health of the movement. We are hopeful that we will be able to carry on in this way, and when the opportune moment comes about, we can recreate Tibet as a free and independent state and a democracy. 

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Roberta Campani: How could this happen? 

Tenzin Tsundue: There are three important factors. 

First and the most important are the Tibetan people themselves. As long as we don’t give up, there is always a chance for us to gain freedom. And if we do give up, no matter even if the entire world comes together to support us, there is no cause to support! 

So finally, the ultimate goal, the ultimate authority over the Tibetan freedom movement, is the Tibetan people. This is the most important fact. 

The second factor is China, because it is China who, without any provocation, entered Tibet, plundered Tibet, captured Tibet and, for the past 70 years, China has been maintaining a military occupation of Tibet. There should be a new kind of understanding within China. The Chinese must completely change the way they run their government and reform their entire structure. They are no longer able to maintain the occupation of Tibet.

China’s superpower status comes from how western countries use the country as an industrial factory floor to make cheap “Made in China” products and ship them to the West. That is how the West created China and made it into a monster. Until 1971, China was not even a member of the United Nations. And American intervention replaced Taiwan with China in the UN. That is how China became a permanent Security Council member at the UN and a superpower. Now, China is trying to throw out the United States from the United Nations. 

(So, China will not continue to be the workshop of the world and occupy Tibet forever.)

The third factor is how China is going to maintain its relationships with western countries, and, with that, what are the changes that are about to come about. We have seen in the past two years during the pandemic how the West has started to behave very differently towards China. Issues of human rights are coming out for the first time and the western relationship with China is changing. And I think this relationship will undergo dramatic changes in the next five years. All these things will throw up lots of opportunities for us.

Roberta Campani: Thank you! Are you still hopeful? 

Tenzin Tsundue: I have to be! There is no option. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The post Tibetan Activist and Writer Tenzin Tsundue Talks to Fair Observer appeared first on Fair Observer.