Life is F*cked

Before you read this, I recommend that you ready yourself by leaving the egocentric confines of your life and allow yourself to stretch the limitations of your awareness of the world around you.

When you woke up this morning, chances are you didn’t wonder, “I wonder how the other six billion people on Earth are feeling right now.” The central focus of this post is to investigate the implications of how we’re seemingly able to block out the astrocities in the rest of the world and focus on our fried eggs and toast instead.

What do you think of when you hear about the wrongdoings in your world? Are you thinking about how those people are feeling in those places, and how miserable their lives are? Or have you already accepted that your world as a whole isn’t perfect, and that you are just happy to be lucky enough to be born in a good country?  In general, most people I speak to have something to say about how they want to do their part to help people around the world; fight poverty, give to the needy, etc. However, very few of my friends have ever actually done anything strictly to help people, so I wonder why people can act like they care but then do nothing about it. Conclusion: People are lazy.

Imagine a crisis in a third-world country. Although there are people who are proactively about trying to make a difference and raising awareness for the crisis, the majority of us go on living our lives. There are more important things to worry about like focussing on work or education, and keeping food on the table. Or, a more narcissistic look at it, we need more time to worry about how we look before we leave the house, or more time to go watch that movie that just came out. On that note, let’s think about these movies that we might be going to see. There are movies like Transformers, which, aside from the cool special effects and nice shots of Megan Fox, leaves everyone praying that Michael Bay stops directing. There’s the romantic comedy that comes out almost on a weekly basis, and these movies will keep selling because the North American girl is hooked on romance.

The one that I want to talk about, however, is the theatrical version of the Rwanda crisis. It’s a brutal movie to watch and anyone who has watched it most likely felt terrible for the people in the movie. Now let’s stop there. Feeling terrible for the people in the movie? They are getting paid to act as people who went through horrors in their lives. I mean really, how does an actor have any decency when he accepts money for portraying someone who went through unimaginable horrors? Is that how we have to raise awareness for a crisis? By making a money-making blockbuster hit? If you’re watching the movie for the plot, just watch the news every day. You’ll get the equivalent of ten movies in just one hour. Think of all the money we could make from these stories! If you’re shaking your head, count the number of blockbuster movies made on wars.

Hint: you’ll need more than just your fingers.  7WT7VR4YE8XV