Understanding the importance of the big picture’ is the next step we as a society need to take in order to better understand the world. The idea of ‘the big picture’ alone is vague and misleading, however I use the term in a way to represent the idea of understanding all sides of an issue. In this case, human rights is the issue. There is one quote in particular that fully explains what it means to understand all sides of human rights and why it should be our next move toward greatness. This quote is extremely important to me for many reasons and is also very closely knit with the curricular of my government class this year.
You cannot talk solely of human rights in terms of torture and imprisonment and killing. True, this is the gravest aspect. But we must also look at the case of the peasant who has no land and is dying of hunger. ” This quote comes from Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Architect and Peace Activist. Born in Argentina in 1931 he was a sculptor and architect in his younger years. In 1976 he became known as a human rights activist. As head of the Latin American Human Rights group SERPAJ, he believed in nonviolent protest and had been imprisoned and tortured for 14 months by Argentina’s military rulers.
In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for being a leader in nonviolent efforts for human rights and having “lit a light in the darkness of Argentina’s violence. ” (Adolfo Perez Esquivel – Facts) I personally find this quote so intriguing due to its idea of “big picture” thinking. In this day and age, I think it has become all too easy for us to forget about what’s not the headlining store on the news. There are so many other things going on in the world that we don’t think about, simply because the issue is too big to wrap your entire mind around.
By breaking issues down into only worrying and contemplating about the most extreme cases we are forgetting that every other case is just as important. And I reckon that’s why I like this quote so much. By including all the stray ends that we generally forget about, it makes you think just a little further. I feel like humanity as a whole is almost failing lately. With all the attacks and the war going on we are focusing on who to kill next and how we are going to stop them. But we are forgetting to look back at the roots. Why don’t we wonder why this all started?
I haven’t seen even one popular article about ways to go deeper into the issue and find out what’s really going. And that’s what this quote does, it’s saying that yes, there are cynical, evil actions that happen that we know are horrendous and we need to fix, but what about the pieces that we are overlooking? Who were these people that bombed all those innocent people? Why did they join a radical religious group to begin with? I wish we looked deeper into why these people decided to do this instead of just trying to kill them all.
I don’t want to seem like some radical liberal, hippie, but there really is hope for everyone, we just have to be willing to take care of everyone else. So, I figure that this quote really hit home for me because it reminds me about what’s going on around me, and it helps to give a different perspective to it all, which is something we all need from time to time. In addition to this quote having personal meaning there are also many ways in which this quote relates to our course. As | stated previously this quote talks about how we mustn’t forget about the underrated issues in any given topic.
In chapter 4 of The Challenge of Democracy it states that a public opinion being “the collected attitudes of citizens concerning a given issue or question. ” Public opinion is swayed by many different factors including mass media. The book states that more often than not people rely on some sort of a mass media outlet for all of their information (Janda, Kenneth). These types of outlet sources generally cover the biggest part of the story in order to keep viewers interested. “In order to survive, [the media] is ncreasingly turning to other strategies such as entertainment, titillation, scandal mongering, and spreading fear,” which means they are only looking to tell the stories that will sell (Mass Media). Adolfo’s quote is saying that we as a society cannot and will not fix the problems of the world just by knowing a little information about the most intense part of an entire problem. In order to fix a situation we need to be looking at all parts and we need to be vocal about all parts without undermining any single one.
We as human beings need to look for other information, we cannot rely solely on what the media tells us because we have to dig deeper to get the real answers, not just the ones that keep the ratings up. However, the media can also be of great use in times of trouble. Media coverage has illustrious effects on equality and how a situation is going to be handled. An example from the book is in the 1950’s and 1960’s when all of a sudden the media zeroed in on the civil rights movement showing all sorts of different ways society was affected by it causing it to move to the top of the political agenda in the government (Janda, Kenneth).
By showing how it affected everyday families and not just big name freedom fighters it brought a sense of awareness that people were able to understand because they were watching what was happening to other people like them, not just big heroes and villains they had heard about on the radio before, this goes back to Adolfo’s quote by relating the fact that all issues on the topic matter when you are trying to change the world. My third example relating his quote to the text is interest groups.
There are many big name interest groups that have a lot of impact on the government and as a result, also have a big impact on the people. Although these groups are important, there are also citizen groups, which are much smaller and not motivated by economic self-interest. These groups stand for things like preservation of the environment, protection of the consumer, family values, and many more that don’t necessarily appeal to everyone but are extremely important to the people involved (Janda, Kenneth).
This relates to Adolfo’s quote because torture and imprisonment are big issues that society as a whole is worried about, but that does not make the smaller more local issues any less important to the people involved. Even though, just like the citizen groups, they do not get much recognition they still need support to move forward. This quote is so relevant because it shows how important it is to really look at the big picture and think about everything that’s right in front of you, not just the radical side of a problem.
This quote is so special because it is just as relevant now as it was back in the 1970’s. There are so many different ways to look at it, from relating to the media and the government, all the way to things that are right in our backyards lately. There are many things I have learned throughout my research, including how impossible it will probably be to solve all of America’s issues without violence. Although I didn’t realize how much media indirectly affected the outcome of events, the government really does listen when the media makes a big deal out of something.
Nevertheless, the real challenge comes from not being able to help everyone. As great as it sounds to save the world and have this wonderful, peaceful place, it just isn’t realistic anymore. The American government can’t save everyone in the world, although it sometimes seems like they are expected to. There are numerous programs and so many people involved already to try and make the world a better, more equal place, but we just don’t have the resources to get out of this hole we are in.
I don’t necessarily think that everyone needs to be equal in how much money they have or what kind of house they live in, or really even any type of material ‘trophy’ but I do think we should at least want to help everyone else succeed. The government shouldn’t just focus of the issues that get press coverage and help those people, then assume the problem is over, we have to be able to help everyone that’s involved. But there are so many different causes and so many different people to help that I think it would be too difficult to fix alone.
