Everybody deserves a rich humanitarian uncle. That is, everyone except for those irresponsible people who keeps making stupid decisions. Admit it, either we are even now thinking like that or we used to at one time in our life. After all, help from the government or NGOs should go to the most deserving or to the ones with the direst needs. But as age catches up with me and I see my nieces growing up into adults whom I deem to be a tad bit less responsible than girls of my generation, my outlook began to soften a little.
Even then, there should be some kind of standard or some sort of radar chart that we can use to check a list of criteria, say that little voice of logic at the back of my mind. A scholarship? Surely the student must come from a certain background, have obtained a certain grade, be of a certain temperament, and while we are at it, make sure that this student is of the right gender, race, religion and whatever political background is considered the choice of smart people.
The world might have become more convenient but it has certainly not become kinder to our children. There are now more 'criteria' in place for us to judge others as well as for others to judge us. Kids are required not just to excel academically but also socially. This trend is so widespread that it has become blatantly apparent in the World Wide Web. Social network sites keep track of how many friends you have, video sites help you track how many times your videos had been watched and you can even tell how popular your link is by searching for it in the listing sites. One site I once joined even went as far as to promote sell-yourself-as-pet to see who can collect the most points, and this was not a dating website or a sex website, but a social network that any child can become a member of.
The decision to be better than everyone else or at least to be part of a ‘cool’ group has driven some into making decisions that risk their lives and values. In fact, some age old values have even been changed to accommodate the new trend. Take for example the athlete who decided to take steroids because it gives him an extra edge or the teenage girl who decides to abort her child because she wants a 'bright future'. It used to be that a teenage athlete would never even know about the existence of steroids and the solution to an out-of- wedlock pregnancy was marriage, but in this time and age, innocence is no longer considered to be ideal.
Change has always been part of humanity because we have this inherent need to improve our life. The moral values of our ancestors in the past were used to put some semblance of order into society thus making life more comfortable, peaceful and tolerable though to some extent this is based on the willingness of certain groups to submit themselves to discrimination. And we as a race continues to pursue that need to make life ever more convenient, ever more comfortable. So much so that we have now reached a point where we feel that 'success' is a lifestyle whereby we can practise consumerism to whatever level our hearts desire.
But how much better are we really, for having made all the right decisions and thus maintaining our position in the capitalistic grid. The poor and the suffering are all nothing more than a reflection of what our lives might have been. They are nothing more than people who have tried to live by the new values and trends of our times, but buckled under the pressure. The only difference between us and them could be a twist of fate that was only minutes apart. A teenager who arrives early at a rendezvous point in the mall becomes acquainted with a drug peddler as she waits for her friends. A young boy walks into a sports shop and is approached by a visiting salesman who introduces anabolic steroids to him. Decisions are made because a question was posed.
When a child breaks a plate, we say, he is only young. When his room is in a mess, we say, he is a teenager. When he forgets to do his homework, we say, the teacher gave him too much to do. Yet when he becomes a drug addict, we say, he should have known better. Maybe we know subconsciously that the broken plate, messy room and forgotten homework was the child’s mistake, but the drug addiction was ours, so that when we blame the child, we move the blame away from us to him. Nobody was born into this world to fail. Most times people fail because they are desperate to succeed.
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