We all have good intentions when it comes to this topic. I'm sure you have seen the commercials many times before. The poor children shuffling through garbage hoping to find something edible. The teenage sibling who cares for his younger brothers and sisters because their parents are deceased. The babies with the bloated bellies from malnourishment. We have all seen the commercials, heard the ads soliciting donations and always think..."Maybe later." It seems that those commercials do not fully impact our perceptions of reality. I am certainly touched by the stories but not always motivated enough to take action. This is the sad truth for the majority of people viewing these ads.
When you really think about it, these organizations are showing us clips of people struggling to stay alive, and often times end up losing the battle. How is it that we can sit on our sofas, watch such a terrible thing, and continue to munch on our snacks and wait for the next television show to return? What is so wrong with us that we can be told that people are dying without so much as even blinking twice?
I cannot say that I am not guilty of it as well. Is there something psychologically wrong with our society that allows us to sit by while others succumb to their own demise? Do we just not care? Do we shrug it off as the cycle of life? What is it? Because when I really think about it, it's terrible. If I put myself in their shoes and think about how hundreds of thousands of people watch the suffering on t.v. and rather than send $50 which could cover living costs for a month, go spend twice that on clothes when their closets are already full, it baffles me.
This is a very deep topic. I remember reading about this subject in Dr. John Berteaux's HCOM 403s class in Spring 2011. From reading the chapter regarding helping the needy, I've come to realize that we do not know the full extent of those T.V. adds or who is genuinely getting the money. I also want to bring up another significant point which is here in the U.S. we have our own hunger and homelessness problems that are yet to be fixed. I feel if an individual wants to sincerely uplift those who are impoverished then he/she should begin with their own communities. There are plenty of people struck by the pressures of life in Chinatown, located in Salinas, CA. I see the misery in front of my face everyday, but I also see the large factors and traces of a hierarchical society which human beings lived in for centuries. Social justice is the main necessity for a global change.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very controversial topic mainly because people may think that if they were to donate money, they wouldn't really be helping the child in need but instead the organization asking for donations. We may ask ourselves will these children really be benefited if we make a donation, most people don't believe so! I agree with the comment above me and I too believe that individuals need to start with their own communities... we see people in street lights all over Salinas asking for spare change. Even though there are places such as Dorothy's Place the amount of people without a home is fairly large and Dorothy's place is limited to only a few people a day. People may feel hesitant to give money to homeless people on street corners because some people believe that they will use the money on "drugs or alcohol" this may be the case for some people but many people have this misconception of homeless people being addicts and therefore, not seeing their humanity and ignoring the fact that it is a problem that is targeting our community.
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