Ignorance is bliss?
I get endlessly frustrated by the ignorance of some people. I know old people always complain about the "younger generations", but I really wonder sometimes. My generation is a generation which has grown up never lacking anything, never facing any real hardships, and now I wonder what the result of it will be. (Or are we already seeing it?) I am always seeing little kids who throw fits because their mommy or daddy won't buy them their 50th game boy game, and it makes me mad. I'll be the first to admit it. I can be selfish, I complain when I don't get a hot shower, I complain if I can't afford going out to eat. But then I feel guilty inside, thinking about the grandparents and great grandparents who suffered to make this country what it is. Who had to live their whole lives without credit cards, who had to not eat or not shower for days because, well, that's just the way it was. I think about those who left their countries to come here and give me all that stuff which I now complain about.
The first major world event that I was old enough to be affected by was 9/11. It made me wake up and realize that the world is not a utopia, that things are not perfect. I realized that the hardship of our past here in America is now for a lot of the world. I know there are many people my age (and all ages for that matter) who are concerned, who try to see to the heart of issues and don't buy into much of the bullsh!t we are fed on a daily basis, but there are still too many disaffected people.
People who think that the planet is theirs, and don't see that conserving it and sharing it is an obligation to the future. People who think that the government always has our best interests in mind, that we shouldn't worry, that we should trust them. People who think voting is pointless, who don't realize that people DIE and people are DYING for that right. People who don't understand that war is not a game, that it's not something that only goes on in other parts of the world.
I overhear people at work talking about how successful these Iraqi elections were... Successful? Did they suddenly forget about the past two years there? These people who proclaim "Success!" are the same people who sit in their comfortable chair in their living room and watch the news or people who surf their blazing cable internet connection and see the headlines and truly believe that someone driving a Mercedes to work and sitting in a comfortable air conditioned studio can tell them what it's like to be living in Baghdad, to worry if it will be your house that will be blown up next. That someone might mistake you for a terrorist and kill you. Or maybe these are people who don't even follow the goings on, but just assume "mission accomplished". People don't wonder how they would feel if there were 150,000 Iraqi troops patroling the streets of NYC or Los Angeles. They don't think about the anger and the hatred and the emotions that would be fueling them and driving them and making them crazy. I certainly can't imagine these things, and that's why it is disturbing to me how people are so supportive of this war. (Note: Even though Iraqis were able to vote for the first time in 50 years, I don't feel the war is justified. But this is not the focus of this post.)
I think a major contributer to the problem is our media, and also that we are too spoiled. The news is too filtered, we given the kind and gentle version of things. Our media is too tight. If people would actually see the things going on in the world, the people who are starving or the people who are being blown up or the people who are living in filth pissing in the corner of their hut, then maybe they wouldn't be so indifferent to them. When a little town gets bombed in Iraq, I want to see it. I want to feel it. If it makes me sick, then I should be sick. If we watched the news and were sickened by it, maybe we wouldn't be so quick to discount the losses. Maybe we wold think twice about if we are helping the world or hurting it. Maybe our holier than though attitude would get knocked down a notch.
Maybe then we would be less ignorant to the things going on around us. Maybe then we would appreciate our lives and everything that we are lucky to have.
The first major world event that I was old enough to be affected by was 9/11. It made me wake up and realize that the world is not a utopia, that things are not perfect. I realized that the hardship of our past here in America is now for a lot of the world. I know there are many people my age (and all ages for that matter) who are concerned, who try to see to the heart of issues and don't buy into much of the bullsh!t we are fed on a daily basis, but there are still too many disaffected people.
People who think that the planet is theirs, and don't see that conserving it and sharing it is an obligation to the future. People who think that the government always has our best interests in mind, that we shouldn't worry, that we should trust them. People who think voting is pointless, who don't realize that people DIE and people are DYING for that right. People who don't understand that war is not a game, that it's not something that only goes on in other parts of the world.
I overhear people at work talking about how successful these Iraqi elections were... Successful? Did they suddenly forget about the past two years there? These people who proclaim "Success!" are the same people who sit in their comfortable chair in their living room and watch the news or people who surf their blazing cable internet connection and see the headlines and truly believe that someone driving a Mercedes to work and sitting in a comfortable air conditioned studio can tell them what it's like to be living in Baghdad, to worry if it will be your house that will be blown up next. That someone might mistake you for a terrorist and kill you. Or maybe these are people who don't even follow the goings on, but just assume "mission accomplished". People don't wonder how they would feel if there were 150,000 Iraqi troops patroling the streets of NYC or Los Angeles. They don't think about the anger and the hatred and the emotions that would be fueling them and driving them and making them crazy. I certainly can't imagine these things, and that's why it is disturbing to me how people are so supportive of this war. (Note: Even though Iraqis were able to vote for the first time in 50 years, I don't feel the war is justified. But this is not the focus of this post.)
I think a major contributer to the problem is our media, and also that we are too spoiled. The news is too filtered, we given the kind and gentle version of things. Our media is too tight. If people would actually see the things going on in the world, the people who are starving or the people who are being blown up or the people who are living in filth pissing in the corner of their hut, then maybe they wouldn't be so indifferent to them. When a little town gets bombed in Iraq, I want to see it. I want to feel it. If it makes me sick, then I should be sick. If we watched the news and were sickened by it, maybe we wouldn't be so quick to discount the losses. Maybe we wold think twice about if we are helping the world or hurting it. Maybe our holier than though attitude would get knocked down a notch.
Maybe then we would be less ignorant to the things going on around us. Maybe then we would appreciate our lives and everything that we are lucky to have.
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