Child Sex Trafficking: And a the desensitization of global TV viewers.

Great Debates
1

My wife and I were watching a CNBC (I think) program about the world of child sex trafficking. Not only were we horrified that it is going on in nations around the world, but horrified that they were showing in grafic detail the life and age of some of the children being horrifically sexually abused. Highlighting a Minnesota doctor working in Thailand I believe. He brought the undercover reporter to a home where he went into grafic detail about how he was purchasing 2 little girls for the night. Absolutely disgusting!
We started talking about the show after we turned it off, philosophically, the viewers of the show are naturally disgusted by the actions of some people in nations where this is a prolific phenomenon. But how many people we wondered, actually did anything about it. What sorts of power does it give the perpetrators of these crimes to commit such heinous acts? Families in the poorest of conditions actually selling children to known sex trafficer’s.
We were postulating between ourselves, Americans, how horrible the situation really is. And how absolutely foreign it is to our way of thinking, our social and societal norms. Nothing in our respective folkways and mores prepares us for the atrocities around the globe being commited everyday.
So what now? I for one feel ignorant to the horrors happening in other countries to their children, to their society of tomorrow. But what about right here in our back yard. Though Serial murder is not a decidedly American phenomenon, it was thought to be so just a few decades ago. We have our fair share of pedophelia, societal maniacs roaming our streets.
We turn on our news of choice and watch as there is another slaying, another abduction, another campus rape, another sex abuse trial, another super star infront of court T.V. - and we come to the sudden realization that what we are watching is not a regional-centric view but something people are seeing on their TV’s all across the country. The sickness of greed no matter of what type be it for sex or money is cast across the globe via satelite for people to watch the world over, and to what end? To the desinsitization of several billion people to the atrocities around the world?

And the twist at the end. My wife and I just spent an inordinate amount of money on a T.V. that shows everything in 42 inches of plasma splendor…Don’y mistake the crystal clear picture in what ever kind of tv you own…because the voice behind the faces can tell you the same terrible news: The global viewers of the world get to some degree desensitized to the horror around us, some become depressed, some block it out, but the images can stay in our collective memory for ever.
What can we do about not getting desensitized? Is it an insurmountable mountain we are all trying to climb?

2

The cosmic equation always maintains itself. Wealth implies poverty. For Carnegie to become obscenely rich small children had to suffer and die in his mines. For people to afford to live in gated communities fellow humans must toil in factories and suffer in slums. A famous philosopher named Jesus of Nazareth understood these things. He understood the effects of material wealth on humanity. Here is the butterfly effect as applied to your situation: every time you go to a store to buy the latest plasma t.v. a child is sold into sexual slavery in Bangkok. The inequities created by the craving for superior comforts are always eventually balanced by the tears of innocents. If you cannot understand this then you are already desensitized beyond remedy and your soul is lost. Just change the channel.

3

Well said.

We are not desensitized…this is the point. Holding onto the fabrics of trying not to be ignorant of such things is our plight.

4

yeah, and every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. :rolleyes:
Only the Carnegie point has actual validity. Plasma TV sales have no connection to the sexual predator industry. Indeed, one could argue that greater demand for plasma TVs means more job opportunities in those countries & hence less desperation for families to sell their children. I wouldn’t claim that as an absolute truth but it has a slightly better grasp of reality than the Zero Sum anti-wealth argument.

5

Phl:

Be careful about chastizing other countries. This is going on in the US as well. In fact, this week’s NYT Mag has it’s cover article, The Girls Next Door on this very subject.

EM:

I think you have created a new Logical Fallacy which I will dub the “Ying/Yang Fallacy”: If A then -A. Sounds really cool in a New Age-y sort of way, but it’s still a fallacy. I suppose it’s just a rewording of a simple non sequitur argument, but it’s common enough that I think the new name is justified.

6

I certainly do not want to come across as chastizing other nations…In fact I’d like to keep that as far from my OP as possible. In fact I say here:

We have our own atrocities going on right here. My ref. to other nations was in lieu of the program we were watching taking place outside the US. Yes, please do not misconstrue my intentions.

7

Be careful who you roll your eyes at my little intellectual pretender. You are dealing with an intuitive genius. First of all I have not made an “anti-wealth” argument nor am I personally “anti-wealth.” Some people have more resources at their disposal than they could ever consume and some people go to bed with hunger gnawing at their stomach every night. This is a situational fact, not a moral opinion on my part. Second, I don’t claim that there are *direct * connections between plasma t.v.'s and sexual slavery. Butterfly effects are complicated and require a scope of comprehension possessed by few. The point in eventual balance of wealth and poverty is that the wealth expended on television sets cannot be expended on alleviating poverty. It is not implied that the factory worker who assembles the t.v. in Indonesia is the seller of children in Thailand. What is implied is that all efforts expended in concentrating wealth and well-being in one area detract from expending the same effort in other areas. A universal truth which is beyond the reaches of high-school debaters.

This post is directed to John Mace also even though I don’t get his “if A then -A” interpretation.

But getting back to reality and the OP, and addressing Phlosphr, my point is that you can’t empathize with all the suffering that goes on in the world…you *have * to be desensitized. It is a mental survival instinct. If you knew the horrible things going on in your own city it would rend your heart. The only real thing anyone can do is to leave the seat in front of the t.v. and go to the very place you are worried about and make a difference. But that is nigh impossible. So every time you go to a store and purchase things you are not expending that effort on solving those problems. (This is why I said every time you buy a t.v. a child is sold etc.) Don’t listen to the hyper-literal analyses of the previous posts. The karmic-cosmic balance is real, regardless of my imaginative phrasing.

8

If Wealth (A) then Poverty (-A).

And you are clearly using “poverty” in an absolute sense (people starving), not a relative one (people not being able to afford a 3rd TV).

9

Saying “I’m smarter than you” is not a valid debating tactic, especially around here. Neither is, “X is a universal truth, that’s just the way it is.” You shall have to provide cites if you expect anyone to believe you.

And what the hell is an “intuitive genius” anyway?

10

Ex Machina, careful here, you’re getting close to sounding like Just Think II, New and Improved.

You are dealing with someone that wants to laugh his ass off.

Let me introduce you to a little concept that made some headway a number of years ago (centuries, actually), that in free transactions, everyone only makes decisions that benefits their own lives. Explain to me the exact manner by which one person having a 42" plasma TV harms another. If there was some magical “resource god” or fairy that flutterered around the world distributing resources (primary production resources, work-hours, etc.), then you’d have a point. But there isn’t. Technology has allowed certain worker’s efforts to have more economic value than other workers. A worker in the plasma-TV factory that can spit out 500 $4,000 TV sets a day or someone driving a tractor over 1,000 acres of genetically modified soybeans benefiting from the advantages of the green revolution has more value than a subsistence farmer working a 2 acre plot strugglying to barely keep a family alive. This is, “A universal truth which is beyond the reaches of high-school debaters.”

So, take your simplistic little zero-sum game back to the drawing board (or Etch-a-Sketch, crayons, finger paints, whatever the hell it is you are using) and reconsider.

11

I don’t think people are more desensitized to violence now than during other periods of history. If anything,Phlosphr, people are more aware and more sensitive to the plight of others via media like your TV. Also, for most people, I would hazard that daily brutality is much less common and acceptable now(of course this is dependant on the area of the world you live in) than in prior generations. Even the concept of every human life having intrinsic value is a relatively new one. I think it would be pretty fair to say that you and your wife’s response to what you witnessed (not even firsthand, mind you) is not at all uncommon, and hardly seems desensitized to me.

12

Are you people really this slow? Do you not get satirical philosophical hyperbole when you hear it? (I don’t even know what a “butterfly effect” is exactly.) Do you think you have discovered a “communist” and are going to impress people with arguments against the ‘redistribution of wealth’ and such? This thread is not a debate about economic principles.

A member calling himself **Phlosphr ** asked this question “…how many people we wondered, actually did anything about it” and he mentioned gaining this information over an expensive piece of electronic equipment. So I answered him in the ersatz manner of a philosopher, saying essentially, in inventive language, that people do immoral things because they are poor, and if you really want to do something about it you should get up from the t.v. and do something, and if you simply continue to buy t.v.'s then you are just perpetuating the status quo in which moneyed people surround themselves with comfort and poor people do bad things for money, and that it is highly impractical to effect change so forget about it - “change the channel.”

If there is anything that bothers you about the “cosmic equation” (a term and concept I just made up on the spot for the post) then maybe there are elements of truth you recognize. One element being that much of wealth is attained at the expense of others - an unemotional fact but hardly a basis for a “karmic-cosmic” theory of a universal balance of gain and loss). But maybe it *is * true that every addition to one man has an exact correlative subtraction from another. I’ll have to look into it. In any event your attack on my words (which were directed at another person) is probably due more to feelings of guilt which you harbor than any threat of a serious economic philosophy promulgated by me. Think about that.

So drop the pose of ‘defender-of-free-enterprise’ and ‘explainer-of-capitalism.’ You are attacking a make-believe theory and you look silly doing it.

Maybe you can start another thread about economic philosophies and keep that boring business confined somewhere else.

P.S. Threemae, every time you buy a new car six babies die of starvation in Botswana. Bothers you, doesn’t it? It’s that karmic umbilical cord which connects the events through a cosmic wormhole. It’s the truth behind the insanity that gets you. You know it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle…

13

Frankly, the only way that I can explain you is along the lines of:

  1. Just Think II has arrived

  2. You’re kidding about the whole thing, but everyon seems to have forgotten to laugh

  3. Last and most likely, you are a troll.

You seem to be using one to argue in all seriousness in your previous posts.

Maybe you should look into these thing prior to posting in the future. Just a thought. Although, if you are trolling, this would seem to match nicely. As would, “Do you not get satirical philosophical hyperbole when you hear it?”

You should look into your satire skills a bit there. Or just drop the whole bit, because us slow people don’t seem to be picking up on it.

I don’t own a car. Nor a 42" plasma TV. Or any TV for that matter. I’m not wealthy. I’m a student, and I’m not feeling guilty about much right now.

Seriously, Ex, be real on one thing. Are you serious about any of this or are you making some pathetic attempt at humor here?

14

I’ve got bad news for you Phlosphr. (warning, very blunt statements about very horrible things done to children ahead)

It’s apparently all over America too. Not just prostitution: outright sexual slavery. That’s right: America has, at the most conservative of estimates, at least 30,000 slaves still in slavery, most of them children, most of them foriegn nationals either tricked or kipnapped into coming here. And instead of sowing fields, their service involves being raped, beaten, tortured, and even murdered for the fun and profit of wealthy American citizens, who induce incredible demand. In Mexico, there exist markets where buyer come to size up either lucrative investments in a stable of underage children, or buy personal sex slaves. Entire crime families in Mexico live in splendour and impunity on the rape of children, and they are so powerful that the government barely bothers to acknowledge their existence, much less combat them in a serious way, and indeed in many cases government officials participate. Collectors in the U.S. trade children out in the open at Disneyland (which provides great cover), color coding them for various uses, one of which includes the “damage” class: which means a child not only to have sex with, but whom johns can also physically abuse and damage, for a higher price.

Are you throwing up yet?

Here’s what bothers me: instead of buying a 2000$ computer, or you buying your plasma screen, I could have bought a little girl from these people to save her from a life of hell, or I could have used that money to try and rehabilitate such a victim, or fight this trade, or so on. The moral choice couldn’t be much starker: a computer vs. saving someone from a life of unspeakable horror and degredation. And I picked the computer. You picked your plasma screen. What the hell is wrong with us?

15
  1. No one invited you to “explain” me.
  2. Read my second post. When a reasonable person sees the phrase “But getting back to reality and the OP…” what would he assume about the preceding remarks?
  3. The fact that you are incapable of detecting the seriousness in my posts is irrelevant. Phlosphr had no problem with it. And he was the one being addressed. Which brings me to
  4. Why would you react so to words intended for someone else?
  5. Where do you think you are? At the student union arguing philosophy with the other sophomores?

This is what I’m serious about: 1. If a person is not going to take any real action to remedy situations of depravity or injustice then it makes no difference whether or not they feel “desensitized” to the matter.

  1. It is a fact that free societies become stratified because some people are successful and others are failures. It is hypocritical for the wealthy to criticize the poor for their methods of staying alive when their condition is “created” by the wealthy, and the selling of drugs and prostitution are made practical alternatives to sustain themselves. But what I said about this in generalizations and pseudo-profundity was hardly intended to be an articulation of a detailed economic philosophy.

Don’t invite yourself into a discussion, create an argument, and then accuse your victim of being a “troll.” Look back at this thread and you will see that you smarted off to me before I even addressed you.

And don’t call me by the abbreviation “Ex”. That suggests a familiarity I reserve for people I like.

16

Leaving aside the truth value of EM’s philosphy, your conclusion doesn’t hold simply because the recipients of those two conditions are different. I don’t think EM ever implied that the people who are wealthy and poor, are the same!

Wealth and poverty can be compared two ways:

1)Absolute wealth and its power
2)Relative weath and its power

With purely regards to two, it seems obvious to me, that a few will be always be relatively rich and few relatively poor. Their absolute condition and standard of living might improve across the board, but its debatable whether humans will ever achieve a state of economic wealth distribution where the relatively poor have adequate access to the needs of that current generation.

17

No. Although not explicity stated, I think most people would reasonable assume that the statement was:

If Wealth [exists in the world] then Poverty [will exist in the world].

With it clearly being different people in those different states.

18

Get over yourself. This is a public message board in which posters post to discuss topics not only with the OP, but for the benefit of lurkers and anyone else who feels like piping in on the topic. The suggestion that commenting on your post is somehow a violation of board etiquite is ridiculous. Threads are nothing like actual conversations. Anyone who feels that they have something to add may say it whenever they want.

I have no reservation or regrets about addressing you before you addressed me. There is no physical presence in the SDMB, and therefore no way to “invite” people into a thread like in real conversation. Again, get over youself. I “smarted off” to you because you presented a simplistic view of the world that I would disagree with. Your subsequent support for this view made me wonder if you were serious at all. You didn’t provide any hint of humor in your first post, but then said that you’ll have to look into what a “Butterfly Effect” is (I haven’t the foggiest notion either, but since you used the term…) and that you would hve to look into wether or not the wealth of one creates poverty for another.

Getting back to the OP, just consider that you haven’t created the situations that cause the suffering of others. Unlike what others have suggested, again, this isn’t a zero-sum game, and your wealth does not lead to their poverty, nor does your happiness lead to their sadness. Unlike what some have suggested (not in this thread, but elsewhere), I do not believe that those who are idle in times of crisis are worse than the evil doers. The people that actually harm others are. Using a commonly cited example, the hottest places in hell are still reserved for Hitler et. al, not the fence-sitters.

So, I guess the question becomes, do we still have some duty to the sufferers in the world to improve their lot? I would answer yes. Personally, that is where private charity and some limited government power comes in. And finally, I realize that the world seems impossible to solve. Too many deaths, too much suffering, too much violence. You are correct, no one person can end all of it. But they can help. Any action that provides comfort or help to another is something that has a definite impact on somone else. It may not make the news. It may not change the horrors that we percieve in the world. However, it will make a difference.

So, my personal take: Don’t sweat the big stuff. You didn’t create disease, famine, or poverty. One should still seek a path in life that allows you to help others. The easiest is working a job and simply giving a portion of your money away. Harder is to volunteer locally. Harder still is to organize some sort of effort to help those far away from you. Do whatever you want, knowing that helping others might relieve some of your own anxiety about it.

19

I should say that now that I look into this NYTimes article, I should have been more skeptical. Not that the sex slave trade doesn’t exist and isn’t horrid, but some of the more extreme claims, such as the estimated numbers and the Disneyland handoffs, seem distinctly undersourced, and probably should not be taken at face value.

20

Funny you should both be unfamiliar with this phrase, as there is a movie just recently released with that title. It refers to the interconnectedness of seemingly meaningless or random events. A butterfly could flap it’s wings in Africa and that might set off a chain of events that leades to, say, a particular man being elected president in the US. Go back in time and change even the smallest detail, and all history might be different.