Brooks, David, “The Wisdom We Need to Fight AIDS” The New York Times, 12Jun05, WK, 2.

(Download Wisdom We Need to Fight AIDS overview as a PDF)

 

 

Brooks writes this article from Xai-Xai, Mozambique while traveling around southern Africa studying the AIDS epidemic. He begins this article in a church, about 10 yards long, where “women gather to sing and pray and look after the orphans of AIDS victims.” He interviews these women and their pastor for their views on the epidemic and gets these answers:

 

 

It is important to use condoms—there are dire consequences of unsafe sex.

 

It’s easier for those who have been touched by God to accept when a woman says, 'no'.

 

 

They talk about praying for the man who beats his HIV-positive wife, and trying to bring him into the congregation. They have polygamists in their church but say that God loves monogamy best.

 

 

In the week I’ve spent traveling around southern Africa, I’ve been struck by how much technical knowledge we have brought to bear combating AIDS (this writer continues). You give us a problem that can be solved technically—like creating the medicines to treat the disease—and we can perform mighty feats.

 

 

The problem is that while treatment is a technical problem, prevention is not. Prevention is about changing behavior. It is getting into the hearts of people in their vulnerable moments—when they are drinking, when they are in the throes of passion—and influencing them to change the behavior that they have not so far changed under threat of death.

 

 

The article goes on to describe a poignant irony: thousands of children in Mozambique’s Gaza province who nursed parents dying of AIDS grow up only to replicate the same tragic behavior. Brooks asks, “If that experience won’t change people, what will?” The depths of this question, brings the author to a sad refrain:

 

 

We have tried technical means to prevent the spread of AIDS, and these techniques have proved insufficient.

 

 

We have tried awareness… surveys show that the vast majorities understand, at least intellectually, the dangers of AIDS.

 

 

We have issued condoms, but condoms alone are insufficient.

 

 

We have tried economic development, but that too is necessary but insufficient.

 

 

If this were about offering people the right incentives, we would have solved this problem. But the AIDS crisis has another element, which can be addressed only by some other language (which the people in that little church slipped into).

 

 

The AIDS crisis is about evil. It’s about the small gangs of predatory men who knowingly infect women by the score without a second thought in the world.

 

 

The AIDS crisis is about the sanctity of life. It’s about people who have come to so undervalue their own life that ruinous behavior seems unimportant and death is accepted fatalistically.

 

 

It’s about disproportionate suffering. It’s about people who commit minor transgressions, or even no transgressions, and suffer consequences too horrible to contemplate.

 

 

Immersing himself, as best he can, into the dilemmas of this tragic crisis, the author cannot but conclude that the AIDS epidemic is about intangibles, character, culture and virtues, things like “trust, fear, weakness, traditions and temptations,” and about “fixing behavior into some relevant set of transcendent ideals and faith.” Brooks concludes:

 

 

That’s a language governments and NGO’s rarely speak. It’s a language that has to be spoken by people who connect words like “faithful” and “abstinent” to some larger creed. It has to be spoken, in Africa, by people who understand local beliefs about ancestors and the supernatural. It’s a language that has to be spoken by an elder, a neighbor, a person who knows your name.

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

 

 

1.   What were your thoughts and feelings about AIDS before reading this article?  Where they challenged or changed in any way?  How so?

2.   I think you must either strongly disagree or agree with this perspective and article of David Brooks. If you disagree, you ought to be able to articulate a clear refutation and alternative solution. If you agree, then what are you going to do about it?

3.   In particular, this article suggests a shift and broadening of language and strategy about AIDS. How would you explain the emphasis on internal attitudes and transcendent faith? Is your faith perspective adequate to handle the complexities of this problem? Does your church or religion have a theology up to this challenge?

4.   Among whom and where should this discussion be held? Could you encourage such a discussion?

 

 

IMPLICATIONS

 

 

1.   Twice as many people die each year in one country, South Africa, as died in the Tsunami disaster. The toll across Africa, and increasingly in the Far East, is incredible. The suffering before death to AIDS and the implications for families and villages stretches our imagination and endurance.

2.   This tragedy has touched the hearts of people and governments around the world.  We should remember and appreciate those on the front lines fighting this disaster at different levels and from different backgrounds.