a reply to:
FamCore
FamCore,
I know where you are coming from. Whether its the constant barrage of examples of the negative effects of the throwaway culture we have designed for
ourselves, or simply a young person, walking with their shoulders and spitting in the street every ten paces, there are plenty of things to be upset
about, when one considers the modern way of living. There seem to be few redeeming features, it carries itself as a cold and unfriendly, desolate
landscape within which to try and make a life.
If you work hard, there is no reason to expect that it will be rewarded, if you do everything your parents and teachers advised you to do when you
were young, it will not have the results you intend unless you happen to be extremely lucky. For those who are not lucky, for the vast percentage of
people in fact, effort put in does NOT equate to benefit you get out. People who are fortunate blame those who are not, for not being a favoured son
of the fates, or God, or whatever deity or force people most believe in.
But there again, what examples have we, really, to aspire to in life? Let us ignore faith entirely for a moment, and consider our leaders. We cannot
look up to these people. They are at best liars, cheats, scammers and schemers, people whose morality permitted them to make money from the misery of
others, to do what had to be done in order to improve a bottom line, a meaningless hoard of finance for themselves. If even those who are placed at
the centre of our lives as our leaders cannot be trusted, have no morality worth a damn, have no honour or decency in them when compared with their
vast inhumanity, what ought we expect from those who grow up with the idea that those who have the most success do the least to deserve it?
Where are the monied men who have callouses on their hands, to show that a hard working life pays dividends? Are there some out there? Perhaps, but
their numbers are dwarfed into insignificance by those who have made success of themselves out of the suffering of the rest, and it is they who occupy
the lauded positions in public life. Attending this gala event, that catwalk show, this music award ceremony, living the life, allegedly partaking in
the "wholesome" pursuit of success as measured by ones wealth.
Those whose successes are REAL very rarely get the recognition they deserve, their names are not known widely, they are local heroes if they are
known at all, their faces are not on the front cover of Time magazine, or even the local paper very often. They quietly get about the business of
living hard lives and smiling anyway, providing an example to only those who know them personally, of how a good soul makes their way in the world.
Their successes are not measured in wealth, but in solidarity, the willingness to hold others up when they cannot stand for themselves, the
preparedness to share the minimal resources they have with those who have less than even they do, the determination not to see a person suffer when
they could help to ease that pain. There are people like that, but their lives are not glamorous, nor rich with excitement, they do not hold the
biggest parties, no one makes a space for them to walk in when they visit the big cities. They do not live lives that people aspire to live
themselves, just lives that people admire in wonderment.
As people in the Western Developed world, our priorities have been wrong for longer than they have been right.