Us (and Them?)

How can I, knowing of my brother who is being stolen at a desolate train station, and my sister being made to sell her body, continue to live a life of privilege? Rather, to live a life of privilege without using that privilege for good? For something more than fulfilling my own needs? For in the big scheme of things, how is my '9-5' job, weekly gym routine and grocery shopping contributing to the needs of the wider world?

There is so much that needs to be fixed. And if those who have the power to bring change, place their hands behind their backs and cotton wool over their eyes, then who will do the fixing?

Ignorance - and more specifically, intentional ignorance - is the biggest disease of modern society. We are disconnected with the origin of our possessions, and the consequences of their disposal; with the source of our food and the lives undermined by its production. We are happy to accept that we are luckier than others, continuing to live lives of novelty, not understanding the potency of our actions and the power that that lies in our own two hands.

We are too lost in pop-culture to find the truth within, and too blinded by pleasure and material to see that whole other worlds exists - worlds in which pleasure and material are luxuries too distant to be afforded.

My heart cannot rest, knowing that there is something to be done. The Greater Conscience in my mind does not commend my hands for laying idle or simply working for their own nourishment.

If ignorance is bliss, then why is it that we are the ones who get to be ignorant? And why is it that many of us take this opportunity, and choose to be ignorant? I wonder for how long this choice will exist; how long before Mother can’t take any more.

I don’t have solutions to all the world’s problems; nor am I the activist I should be. But action begins with thought, and if He so pleases, the seed of idealism that He has planted in my mind, will grow into the tree of activism that is too tall for me to yet envision.