Mind the Gap

I live in Oxford so I would not blame you if you thought that poverty is not something as obvious in one of the most affluent cities in the United Kingdom. But it is here more than ever that I feel the Gap between the rich and poor, and it is here more than any other place in the world that I have been to that this massive discrepancy leaves a rotten taste in your mouth.  Among the streets of this ancient city walk the children of millionaires and billionaires, sharing the walkway with rich Asian tourists and future oligarchs, as well as countless regular folk that go about their regular business. The streets of Oxford are clean, and contain a 1000 years of history. Intelligent men and women rush about, and at night during ball season the city is awash with colour and glamour. 

Yet Oxford with its walls of blond stone hides a deep secret. Amongst its thick walls and on its cute cobbled streets in front of the shiny windows of expensive boutiques sit huddled under damp duvets the homeless. A class of individual that we rarely acknowledge, who’s hand we shrug off when they extend it our way asking if we can spare some change. We look down upon this person who has hit rock bottom and is digging even further down. We excuse our own callousness with thoughts such as “they are a druggy or an alcoholic”. More often than not we are not wrong, some are people with deep social problems of drug and alcohol abuse, but some are just people that have lost control of their lives.

 As you all may know I am Bulgarian, and my country is hands down the poorest one in the EU. Beggars are everywhere, they have quite literally become part of the scenery in my mother land and people don't just ignore them, they actively loath them. They look at them with spite and unveiled hatred as these men, women and children walk, hobble, craw, and drag themselves over to ask for change and help. Many are part of gangs that use and abuse young children and women for profit through begging. But not all of these people are corrupt and trying to steal our hard earned money. We have one of the highest percentages of pensioners that are literally starving and freezing to death and who are forced to go out and beg.  It will not be an uncommon site to have a little old lady, doubled over by age and 50 years of serving the old socialist state, who’s pension is so miserable that she is selling packet of tissues at a bus stop in the desperate hope that she will be able to buy a loaf of bread with her earnings. The response to her is nothing, total oblivion to her existence. Her goods will only be sold to those in desperate need of a tissue and only at that time will her existence be acknowledges by anyone, for the briefest of moments and with total lack of empathy or emotion. A coin or two will be thrown at her, she wont see a smile, and may by some miracle hear a mumbled thank you. After some number this type cold encounter her desperate state of affairs will soon come to a miserable and undignified end, which  will be recorded in a death register somewhere, she will not be missed, her life will be forgotten. Does this all sound bleak to you? A bit dark for a Friday night isn't it?

This darkness is a place where countless number of people live in every day. We don’t just ignore them, we label them with names such as drug addicts and alcoholics, and God knows what else. Partly because some – never all – are such things, but that is never all that they are. Partly to hide our own feeling of guilt for being better of. We actively hate these people, we judge them for the choices they have made in life without knowing what those choices really were. We never ask ourselves, what if they weren't given a choice? What if they were born in a family that wasn't caring, were abused by people that should have protected them, were failed by their teachers who were too busy meeting government targets to notice the systematic destruction of this persons. What if they were in this place begging and homeless because it was the smaller of two evils?  Who are we to judge without the knowledge of who they were and are?!

The saddest part is that giving this person a pound or two will have no effect on their destitution, and is likely to only help sustain any drug or alcohol abuse that is holding them there. The solution is one that requires the empathy of an entire nation, a deep change in society that steps away from shallow consumerism, instant gratification and short term planning.  A change to a society that celebrates and supports both the individual and the community they live in. That supports family values  by allowing mom and dad to spend a bit less time in the office and a bit more time with their children. That objectifies both men and women less. Where school isn't all about the next test but is about teaching young people to communicate, gives them confidence and self worth, as well as skills that are vocational –  boiling an egg and washing a dish is a good start if some of the young people I know are anything to go by!

I know I am preaching, but I am not really asking much, all I would like is next time you walk past a homeless person, even if you don't want to give them money, give them a thought and if you want a smile and a “sorry”. Especially now in winter, because you are going home to warm bed and a cup of tea, they are sleeping on a step in negative Celsius temperatures. Kindness goes a long way and doesn't cost you anything.


If you want to help lower homelessness please get involved here: http://www.crisis.org.uk/

Good Night     

Pondering on Climate Change

Freezing weather in the state of New York

Is the Weather out to get Us?!

It’s a  bizarre sounding question I know, but bear with me a minute here. You see in the world of academia [where I primarily exist these days] there has been this shift of ‘securitization’.The best way to explain what securitization is is by quoting Barry Buzan; making something a security issue means it “is presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measure and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure” (Buzan et al, 1998, p. 23). If you or I were labeled a security threat that would mean that all violations to our human rights are acceptable, they can listen to your phone conversation, read your [e-]mail and bust in on you while you are in the shower, arrest you and take you somewhere where not even God himself will find you. How does this relate to the weather you ask? Climate and the way it is changing is being portrayed more and more as a security threat, and after all weather is what you see but climate is what drives is.  

This event is not occurring just in academia. In everyday life the changing climate of our planet is being labeled “dangerous”. It is stages as a threat that needs to be eradicated.But how are we to save mankind for Climate Change? Well I would love to tell you but that is usually a step too far for these beacons of security. All they really do is scream “DANGER, DANGER!”
You don’t believe me? Here is an example:
In a newspaper article Professor Anthony Costello says that:
“Climate change is the biggest threat to human health” that is it a “clear and present danger…that is affecting billions of people!” (The Times Online May 14th 2009, Sam Lister) The article continues in a similar tone telling us how we need to do something now to secure humanity’s future.

Why are we so scared of Climate Change?  

This is why: 

Property Destruction from Sever Storms in the USA

By this stage our heads are SO full of the fear that this monstrous climate change poses that we will gobble up anything that will be fed to us as a solution. We will buy electric cars, recycle, buy organic products, wear hemp and pray to Gaia in the hope that we are saved! 

Now before you label me a climate change sceptic let me make one point PERFECTLY clear! I am NOT disputing that Climate Change carries huge costs to humanity, the pictures above show that only too strongly. I am also NOT disputing that being more responsible with your consumption of transport and other goods as well as recycling is going to make a change. All those are things that we should all do. I am disputing however the use of a language of fear, crisis, insecurity, and panic. It is hardly going to deal with the problem by making people run for the hills, or buy products labeled “environmentally friendly”! With all due respect to  ALL the professors out there, we need a language of awareness and empathy.

I know what you are thinking, oh god not another one of them hippies that is gonna tell me to go hug everyone and it will all be better. Don’t worry although I am an idealist I am a pessimistic one, it balances it all out that way, although this is gonna get heavy from here on! What I mean is knowing what we are doing, and trying to change it out of pure empathy towards the harm those actions have done. And lets face it:

Our actions have caused: Destitution, Hunger, Shame, Pain, Fear, Loss, and Death.

Sever Famine and Overindulgence

So when I say awareness I mean making people aware of how their actions cause the above, but not just that. Making people aware of the simple facts; not just of the dangers that the changing climate poses to us, but our part is creating this danger. Some ugly truths about the highly consumerist, self-centred individualistic nature of many communities need to come out so that we do not have to see pictures as the ones on the right or underneath. This needs to be done in a way that does not point the finger of blame and try and shame us into action. We need to understand WHY we need to change our actions. And here is where the empathy kicks in.

Sever Flooding

We are all despite our many and wonderful differences the same at the core of us. We generally do not want to see people suffering as the mother and child are above. Even though we have do not know these people we feel a deep sadness and an urge to help in any way we can, we empathise, because despite everything else they are like us. Making us aware of the harm our western culture produces in developing and underdeveloped regions will hopefully make that empathic instinct kick in on a larger scale. It will make us understand that we are literally the cause of those starving and dying children, and as members of mankind we have a responsibility to stop it, now!

Our greed, gluttony, consumerism, selfishness, and most and worst of all apathy is slowly choking the life out of our planet and many of the people on it, and our planet will in turn return the favour.

I am going to start the awareness process with the video below. I dare you to watch it and throw out perfectly good food!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjtIl5B1zXI&feature=youtu.be

We only have one Earth please look after it!