Hotel Rwanda
After seeing the footage that Jack Daglish shot of Interamwe soldiers murdering innocent Tutsis, Paul hopes that the footage will be sent out and encourage people to stop these terrible acts of violence. However, that is not the type of world we live in. Unfortunately, we live in a world where if people are content with their lives, then they do not care about the struggles that other people are facing. We say that man is a choosing animal, however most of the time we only choose to do things based on how it will affect us.
We have the ability to help other people out who are struggling, but instead we choose to live in a Teflon cocoon. When we are living in a Teflon cocoon, we are denying that we as humans can do something to stop other humans from suffering. In this case, human beings were denying that they could go out and help the Tutsis who were being persecuted in Rwanda. People were only caring about getting on with their own lives and not helping out others who really needed other people to be there for them.
When Daglish says, “I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners,” this is a precise example of people living in Teflon cocoons. It has somehow gotten in our human nature that we should only worry about our own well-being and not care about others who are in danger. Human beings around the world are not living in the web of human relations. They are mainly living inside their own separate Teflon cocoons not worried about the world outside their city or town.
If we want to thrive as human beings, we must take responsibility to help each other out in times of need. If we would do that, we would be truly living in the web of human relations. Even Paul is not fully living in the web of human relations in the beginning of the movie. At first, he is only worried about saving his immediate family. He then branches out to help save all of his family and eventually his neighbors. Then when gets back to his hotel, he breaks completely out of his Teflon cocoon and comes to the aid of all Tutsis. The people depended on Paul to let them stay in his hotel as a kind of refugee camp.
People around the world lost sight of their moral ecology because they did not believe it would benefit themselves to help the people in Rwanda. We as human beings need to realize that we are interdependent on each other. Not only should we depend on other people, but they should depend on us as well. When people are living inside of Teflon cocoons, they only worry about either depending on themselves, or depending on others but not letting others depend on them. Paul only realized that he must break out of his Teflon cocoon when a time of emergency showed up.
Unfortunately, that is what it takes for most people to believe in the true meaning of interdependence. If only most of the world would realize what the word means before a time of emergency hit, we could live in a much more peaceful earth and have faith in our fellow human beings. I do not believe our world will ever come to that stage, but we should at least try and break out of our Teflon cocoons and start showing others that we are there for them. Maybe then a domino effect will happen and everyone will realize that we are all there for each other.
