Whats Wrong With You?

What’s wrong with society today? How many issues can we actually see?From the starving in third world countries to the drowning in Houston Texas and India whose lives have been turned upside down in a night. We don’t have to feel guilty though of course, for we are merely normal people who lead normal lives that don’t interfere with theirs. We’re first world and they’re third world. We can’t make a change so what’s the point, right?

Well let me ask you, as did Peter Singer, would you save the life of a drowning child? What if you had on expensive shoes and a watch that you didn’t have time to take off? You would? Are you sure? Well, why don’t you?

UNICEF recently published figures saying 5.9 million children or so die every single year in impoverished countries. They were proud of that figure. I was not. See, they were proud of the fact that they managed to control such figures from 12 million down to 5.9. My question is why isn’t it close to 0?

The reason is us. You and I reading this. We spend so much and give so little. I see my friends queuing up at shops ready to buy shoes for hundreds of pounds at ridiculous times just so they can look a little more like their favourite rapper or sports star. Others who couldn’t wake up pay resale of double or more the sale price just so they can stay current with the trend, the trend of spending now and thinking later. I can’t blame them for this. After all, it is society who from a young age shows us what’s right from wrong, its society that shows us that a homeless person on the floor only deserves a few pennies whilst we walk past them and into a shop to splurge hundreds. Its human nature to think for oneself, to survive, but is It not nature to reason and to think about these issues on a wider scale? Those shoes that you bought for £300, do they really make you happy? Or would 7 children be happier with eyesight in developing countries if you decided to donate that instead.

It’s our faults for segregating and gating ourselves off by living in fancy houses with roofs and walls that block out the pain and suffering of the world. We say were first world and they’re third, but we share the same world so isn’t that enough? Why it is that governments are ready to spend billions to send armies into different lands far away just to show their power yet when their own citizens are in trouble they ask us for aid? Why is it that even in society we can’t stand united due to labels of religion, belief, race, thought and opinions pulling us apart? Why can’t we just help?

Is capitalism to blame? Or is it the system that cheated us even though we vote for it? Now, I know a lot of you are thinking about this and wondering if you actually have a voice, well if you don’t know then surely those who are listening wont either. Your silence is a luxury and your voice a privilege, use it and make a change if you care enough. Capitalism was just a thought that came about a hundred or so years ago and before it came many systems that made no change. You see it’s always been the elites against the bottom part of society. Before they were branded slaves and servants. Today they are so disregarded they have no name besides the bottom 50%, the same bottom 50% who have less wealth than the top 5%. The same bottom 50% who are exploited in faraway lands so that I and you can help the top get richer and stay as influential as they have always been.  You know they’re being exploited, you know they’re forced into work to save for their families, you know but you still sit there doing nothing.

Back to Capitalism though, it can’t be an idea’s fault as to why there’s such inequality, as the idea was fine before we tried to carry it out. Just as Communism could’ve been a solution before us, as humans, carried it out. So, what is the problem? Humans? Well how can we solve the human problem? Woah. That sounded so extreme. Or was it that humanistic idea in you that to solve a problem we have to wipe it out? After all that’s what we do. We see the issue and go about solving it through eradicating it. Someone’s addicted to drugs? Well let’s put them away for a long time so they’re of no use to society or to anyone. As humans, we are too a type of addict. Ones that are addicted to money and power, the more you get the more fun you have. I don’t think that’s punishable, should you gain it through ethical means and give back to society rather than green-washing. However, for those who can’t get out of this bubble of pleasing themselves, why aren’t they punished or sanctioned? In the riots so many young people were put into prison in one night yet in the 2008 crash no bankers were. Looting a High Street is now a bigger crime than flipping the entire financial market and shaking it to its core. So much so that people actually killed themselves due to the financial strain yet was any banker or financial organisation blamed or actually punished?

So many questions yet we still don’t know the answer. We are free so long as we don’t get close to the limits. We can discuss because we have the liberty to. We formulate the questions yet forget we are the solution.