Ah, excellent, a time for me to quote Frank Zappa as opposed to George Carlin and continue the stream of evidence that I do not, in fact, develop original thoughts.
Paraphrasing:
"The first thing a child says after they learn to say mommy or daddy is 'mine!' and any political system that works against this, is, needless to say, inherently flawed at it's core."
An old friend of mine (actually, she's young, I just knew her well before now) once said that Communism is the perfect form of government for a society of robots. With people, it'll never work. I have little to add. And that's what I have to say about that. Now...
Are we apathetic? Yes. Relative to the world as a whole. Relative to one another, or the lives we lead, we are not. This is the problem. I'm eating dinner, I made too much, I don't particularily care for reheated ______(whatever I'm eating) so I throw the excess away. Relative to my personal economics and sustinence needs, this is perfectly acceptable. Relative to the fact that millions of people in this world are starving and dying, it is not.
People are going to go golfing, and shoot a bad game, and be pissed off and bitter about it and let it ruin their whole day. People are going to get their cars stolen and get all downtrodden like it's the end of the world, because relative to the world they live in, it is a big issue. This year, I was dumped by my first girlfriend, lost my job, had two grandparents die, got my car stereo stolen, found out my dog has serious health issues, my aunt's apartment burned down (losing the ashes of one of those grandparents), and probably more I can't remember. I can say to myself that this isn't really all that bad, I could be living in a dumpster instead of a nice big house and trying to figure out the nutritional value of axle grease as opposed to having more than enough food all the time, and I'd be right. As bad as the aforementioned things are, that means I'm having a little unlucky stretch in my remarkably lucky, easy life is was born into at the top 5% of the population of this world in terms of wealth (That's a shot in that dark statistic, by the way - I'm really guessing there).
So, I guess my point is this: I could rationalize it all relative to the shittiness of the planet (and I actually tend to), or I can have the gall to feel I'm a little hard done by and be somewhat upset. I don't mind people who get wrapped in their comparably petty little things, so long as they are capable of seeing the bigger picture when they need to. If somebody finds out they're going to need to (I dunno, RANDOM example, heh) get an abortion and are going on like it's the end of the world and somebody says "well, it can be a lot worse" and they can't see how, then... that's different. Especially if someone with a much bigger problem comes along and that person can't calm down and rationalize and grasp and see that...
I can completely understand your attitude, luke, but people always see their own shit first and foremost, that's how we work. I don't really like it either, but that's the way we are. I suppose the best we can hope for is to keep people to educated what happens outside their own bubbles of existence. As for spreading the wealth, it's a great idea in principle but we'd have to find a way to do it fairly. Capitalist society (probably the second worst form of government to communism) is built on the promise that if people work hard they can achieve personal success and I think that ethic is necessary. That DOESN'T mean, of course, that those starving in Somalia had equal oppourtunity to a U.S. Congressman's kid, and that they just didn't work as hard.
The divison of the rich and the poor has existed as long as society has. Is there a feasible solution we can enact today? Someone wiser than me please figure it out and let us know... because all I can suggest right now is that we all try to do a few small things, donate to food hampers whenever they're collecting, etc. and hope collective efforts can make a difference. Is this naive? You tell me...
Another diatribe down, sorry for taking up so much space...
