Human Flow
“It is important to
recognize that the world is shrinking and people from different religions,
different cultures are going to have to learn to live with each other”
The quote above is from the documentary, Human Flow, and I
think perfectly captures the attitude that we need as architects and engaged
global citizens, to address social and spacial justice. We are living in a time
period in which people are being displaced from their homes, their countries at
a rate we haven’t seen since World War II. It isn’t something new, this has
been happening for years, and people (Americans) are just becoming mildly aware
without actually having any empathy or opinion because it doesn’t really affect
them.
Ask my mom in rural Michigan what the European Refugee Crisis is and she’ll
probably shrug, then continue to tell me “oh, you know the grocery store just
put in a gas station, and Bob Smith just got arrested for a DUI the other night”
(love her but demonstrates our closed-mindedness). After watching the trailer
again, I scrolled down to the comments section, which really highlights our
ignorance, our disrespect for basic human rights, our overall lack of empathy,
and how race – a made up construct, is what is keeping us from considering these
refugees as human beings. See what National Geographic has to say about race:
Modern science confirms “that the visible differences between peoples are accidents of history”—the result of mutations, migrations, natural selection, the isolation of some populations, and interbreeding among others, writes science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. They are not racial differences because the very concept of race—to quote DNA-sequencing pioneer Craig Venter—“has no genetic or scientific basis.”
The film addresses 23 country’s crisis' over the course of a
year, visiting borders that have become irrelevant, fluid almost. It drones
over camp after camp, along long roads being traveled, people being herded like cattle. So this leads me to the
question, “how can architecture help this crisis, one of the largest in global
history to date?” But maybe more importantly is the question, “what will it
take for American’s to actually care about this issue when we are so comfortable
in our warm houses, with running water, food every day, and a very sheltered
view of the world in which we share?”
Check out the Human Flow trailer below:
Check out the Nat Geo Article below:
Felt so related to this post... When I got to the US, this was a huge surprise for me. In my country we have in general a melting pot of cultures, races and social status, but there we all see each other as the same and our differences just make us curious and open to meet different people. Here it shocked me how society has huge barriers between cultures.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post and a topic that I think we need to be talking about a lot more. The US was built based on the idea of being a "melting pot" of cultures, people, and thinking but how did we get so far away from that mentality?
ReplyDeleteIts really great to see this empathy and awareness in atleast our generation. At the same time, the amount of fear that the media, the people in power etc are developing amongst the commoners, is another major factor that contributes to such unfamiliarity. And this directly affects the society we live in and what sort of a built environment it results. No matter, how optimistic we are about the profession, I don't think this is a problem we can solve.
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