Everyone must have seen the small
energy-saving cars that fill the streets of cities these days. There are also
big cars; as much as several times the size of the small ones. When talking
about cars, if it is necessary to emphasize the size of the car, we attach the
adjective “big” or “small” to the noun. Or we call the models by different
names –– such as “limousine” or “mini” or “van,” for example.
We call a huge car that's meant to carry
heavy cargo, a truck. As well, we call a bus, the huge car that's meant to
carry many people. All these vehicles are modes of transportation, but they are
not the only kind we use. When it comes to land transportation, there are the
bicycles, so named because they run on two wheels. And there are the motorbikes
who are bicycles powered by a mechanical engine. They all differ from other
modes of transportation, such as those that float on the water or swim under it
or fly in the air.
When ordinary people are having a normal
conversation, and someone refers to an incident that is as insignificant as
seeing a driver run a red light, they don't bother specifying if that was a big
car or a small one; a mini or a limousine. In more involved conversations, people
are careful not to confuse between a car and an airplane, for example. So, they
use a more precise language to be clear what they mean.
The intent of this conversation is to
point out that unless it is absolutely necessary to be precise, normal people
are comfortable relying on fuzzy language if not fuzzy thinking when they
engage in everyday small talk. In fact, if some nerd keeps interrupting them,
insisting that they employ a more precise language, the rest of the gathering
calls him erudite. This means he reads too much, has become too educated for
his own good, and proving how annoying he can be. This leads us to the reality
that the artificial world we have created (outside the stern academic setting,)
mimics the easy-going natural world to a large extend.
In fact, in the same way that biological
life is grouped into a hierarchy of categories, ranging from the Kingdom to the
Spices, the technological and institutional systems we have created, can be
grouped into several categories. This is true for the modes of transportation
we use to move around, as it is for the ways that we incarcerate people when we
need to restrict or contain their movements.
More importantly, in the same way that
you'll find quantitative differences between members of the same species ––
such as tall people and short people –– you'll also find quantitative
differences in the artificial creations that we produce. An example would be
the mini and the limousine, both of which are land roving vehicles, but of
different models. However, when you evaluate a car and a submarine for example,
you'll have to acknowledge seeing a qualitative difference. This means they are
two different categories –– having the same purpose of moving people and goods
around –– but doing it in completely different ways. One vehicle moves on land,
the other moves under the sea.
Well, the principle of separating the
quantitative differences from the qualitative differences, comes into play with
vengeance when we evaluate the institutions that we create; one of which being
the way that we confine people. To see how important this topic is, all you
need to do is read the column that came under the title: “There are no
concentration camps on the border,” written by Richard Cohen and published on
June 24, 2019 in The Washington Post.
What Cohen is trying to do, is make sense
of the differences between the term “concentration camps,” such as those of
World War II, and the term “detention centers,” such as those that exist at the
American/Mexican border. There is no doubt these terms refer to different
constructs. But are the differences quantitative or are they qualitative? Much
rides on finding the correct answer to that question.
To Richard Cohen, the differences are
qualitative because he sees the two constructs as totally different from each
other. Here is his explanation: “No one is being held for political,
ideological or religious reasons. No one is being whipped and made to work
until dead from exhaustion. There is no crematorium, and no one is being
crucified upside down as they were in Buchenwald, where a nearby area was
called the ‘singing forest,’ so named for the screams of the dying”.
As to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who called
the conditions at the Mexican border, concentration camps, she thinks differently.
That's because the toddlers and the preteens that cared for them, were the ones
that suffered at the border installations. Granted, the children were not
waterboarded as were the wartime adults detained at the Guantanamo detention
center, but the children were hungry, sick, sleeping on concrete floors and
dying in peacetime America, not knowing why they were punished. They did not
know because they had neither mother nor father to explain to them the harsh
realities of life … having been brutally separated from their parents.