The poor

We like to disconnect ourselves from the unfortunate in society, separate ourselves and make up excuses as to why those in need are in need, put the blame on them, wash our hands of it, and skillfully move on with the idea that people who can help themselves should and if they are suffering, it is their fault.

That really really upsets me.  

Perhaps studying the Enlightenment as much as I did during my Undergraduate studies and reading the concepts of the Social Contract over and over again... but regardless of who you worship, regardless of whether you are rich or poor, we are all kind of in this boat together...so if we let people suffer, if we let them fall deeper and deeper in despair, eventually it will come back to us.

I am sure when Marie Antionette danced around Versailles having lavish parties with overly expensive diamond necklaces, creating faux villages that she could visit and pretend to be a "commoner" and made ignorant assumptions about the availability of food when people starved (you see when she said "let them eat cake" she actually thought that since they were out of bread they could just eat cake because it was obviously ready available for her so it must be like that throughout France...thus she was THAT out of touch), she never thought eventually the people who didn't have food to eat would eventually turn the country upside down and kill anyone that even looked wealthy out of sheer madness and frustration...but she lost her head because of it.

Do I think that if we continue to ignore the growing population of the working poor that they will rise up like people in 18th century France... I hope not, but I am losing faith in the population when someone honestly says that as long as someone isn't "starving to death" or "dying from a disease" and homeless...they obviously are doing OK.

Let me preface...the Ayn Randian scary mentality that has crept into the thoughts of a lot of people lending to the notion that the "have nots" have nothing by choice really piss me off.

I am sure there are poor people who are lazy, but I have worked with quite a few people who would be called "the working poor" and lazy would not be a word I would attach to their lives.  I just think we need to start realizing that when you start to believe it is OK to let people slip into the gutter, something is wrong.

I think Rousseau needs to make a comeback...people need to do something, think about humanity as one, go to church and actually BEHAVE the way their chosen faith deems it (many pretty much say take care of the least of people), people need to realize that if we continue to not care... more and more people will suffer, and none of us are so wealthy that our fortunes may reverse in a second.