I was just checking an article on Bill Nye when a headline on the side of the page caught my eye: “Reports of deadly shootout near Empire State building”. The first thought going through my mind was: “Surely not another one?” It was indeed another shooting, though from the looks of it, most of the victims were hurt in the police’s efforts to stop the guy.
What on earth is going on?
What’s going on is that people are subjected to unbearable pressure in a country where there are almost as many guns as there are people. (Blowtorch, meet dry wood.) I can’t help but think this is yet another benefit there would be to teaching people how to live outwardly, how to manage stress, how to live well and understand the full value and meaning of their lives, which goes so far beyond working and earning.
There’s something else, though. In Ireland, there’s joblessness, there’s frustration, there’s worry and depression, but there is a safety net. There’s good, solid social protection, you’re unlikely to become destitute. There are opportunities: my neighbour across the street lost his job in the building industry, the state is paying for him to retrain in a totally different direction. If it wasn’t for that, where would it leave him, his wife, and their three small kids? In this country, hitting a rough spot is tough, it’s stressful, but it’s not as devastating as it would be to hit the same rough spot in the USA.
In the US, there is no safety net. That alone turns the stress of a rough patch into a burden that breaks spirits, destroys minds, and pushes people to desperate extremes.
The article about tent cities in the States, which I linked to in the above paragraph, contains a quote from the Republican government official responsible for this, which couldn’t summarise the problem better if you tried:
Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor, Brian Calley, was asked about the reality of public agencies in his state suggesting the homeless live in tents.
“That is absolutely not acceptable, and we have to take steps and policies in order to make sure that those people have the skills they need to be independent, and it won’t happen overnight,” he said.
(Emphasis mine)
That right there is your problem. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated overwhelmingly that HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT EVOLVED TO BE INDEPENDENT. We are an interdependent, social species. This obsession with independence is one of the major symptoms of a system which is destroying us.
I think it’s very much the “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for the rest of his life” philosophy. What its proponents don’t consider, is that you can teach a man to fish all you want, if he doesn’t have a rod, line, sinker, weight and hook, he can’t fish even if he knows how. And if he’s so weak from hunger that he doesn’t have the strength to hold a rod, he can’t fish either.
Sometimes, you just need to give the man a damn fish.
