Ranting – part 1: About others

PROLOGUE:
Everyone’s trying to convince me that this world is on the right track (albeit moving slowly), that people are inherently good and so, that good will prevail; that our “problems” are just bumps on the path to this perfect world that’s right around the corner, just waiting to happen. Sometimes I can’t believe that people actually expect me to go along with that when the only argument they can really summon is that it sounds so good and it makes us feel so warm and fuzy inside that it just HAS TO BE TRUE. Oh wait… did I say argument? Are we all voluntarily choosing to be deaf and blind?

I have often named an excessive realism as a reason for my skepticism, criticism and on ocassion rebellion. Maybe it’s about time I shed some light into these matters.
There is a crack in everything my friends. That’s how the light gets in.

Part 1: About others
At least 100 million people (to give you an idea that’s about 3 times the population of California and about 1.5% of the world’s population) are going to sleep on the street tonight with no home. Some estimates go as high as 500 million (consider that the US population is about 300 million). Estimates for street children are similar, somewhere between 100 and 150 million. And do we worry about them? No, we worry whether or not our home is properly feng shui. Or we throw them some change when our expensive leather shoes trip over their rags and move on proud of our epic kindness. I’m surprised we don’t expect to get paid back for our gesture.

Not impressive? Of course it wouldn’t be, we do what we can for them, right? We can’t be blamed. Well, here’s another thing to meditate on. About 800 million people are chronically hungry. And before you start telling me that we just can’t feed everyone, I should add that interestingly enough, more than one billion people are overweight (yes, that does mean that a lot MORE people constantly consume considerably more food than they need while there are people dieing of hunger). Let’s add that about two billion lack food security (that’s about 30% of the world’s population, so almost a third) and I think we have something to talk about. Did you enjoy your dinner last night? I sure did. I actually ate too much.

So why do I get to sit in my comfy chair, after a good and large dinner and write this post? Is it because I’m better than all those other people? Maybe, maybe I am. But I think it has nothing to do with better, I think it’s just because I was LUCKY. Lucky enough to have a roof over my head every night of my life, lucky enough to not worry about whether or not I will eat dinner tonight, lucky enough to have a family. I did not move a finger for any of these things, I just had them. Had I not had them I couldn’t have obtained them. And since I’m an agnostic, I don’t believe it’s anything more than randomness, pure luck. Just as well I could’ve been starving and freezing now. Or maybe already dead. What about you? Why do we get to “gather in moments like this when so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos”? Are we special? Are we better human beings? Are we superior? Or are we just plain lucky?

Okay, so apocalyptic talk, bla bla, are we about wondering if there’s a point to this? There’s no point, this is a philosophical point of view, not a political one like you’re probably used to. But if you really want a point, how about this: if the only thing setting the difference between me (or you) and THEM is where we were born, isn’t that pure discrimination? If people work endlessly to provide food for us, when they themselves starve, isn’t that slavery? And do we not ignore it, like the nobles of the land – that we now despise – have done for centuries? And do we not say that it is NECESSARY, as was said ever since the beginning of history? You speak to me of evolution, well speak, where is it? All I see is the same poison in a different cup. A more intricate one, more carefully worked, to better hide the burning, rancid scent of what it contains. But same poison unchanged, indicative of a rotten core hidden deep inside humanity. Oh granted our cup has evolved. So much that we can handle this poison every day of our life with our hands perfectly clean, without even a bare scent of its real content reaching our fine nostrils.

So let’s go over that question again: are we voluntarily choosing to ignore? Or is it involuntary? Or is there no choice at all? What do you think? Do you care at all? Should you?

You may notice I ask a lot of questions. It’s true, I do not offer answers, solutions, suggestions. I wouldn’t even if I had any, but I do not. Everybody thinks they have answers nowadays and everyone expects answers. This should stop. The real help someone can give you is ask the right question. So all I have to offer to you, are questions and that’s really all that matters. Try and find your own answers, otherwise all this is useless.

TO BE CONTINUED…

NOTES:
- I read an interview with L. Cohen in which he called Anthem his best song. It took me a while to understand why. If you do, then you will understand why I put it here, otherwise I can’t really explain it.
- The numbers I have are taken from Wikipedia and seemed well referenced. If you don’t trust them you are welcome to come up with your own from other sources, I would be glad to have them.