Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Looking past the action to the root cause (#2699)

     I am no different than anyone else. I see someone doing wrong and I want to make them pay for it. Especially those who harm or take. It is natural to be angry at someone for making our lives harder. I get it. Yet there is always more to the story. How did these harmers and takers get to the point of having no other viable option than doing wrong to live. Some are just bad and could care less what they do to others and some are just greedy and power hungry and will stop at nothing to get ahead. But many are stuck in bad circumstances with little hope of ever getting out of their brutal cycle. These are the ones who have my attention.
     It is as if, through my own experience, nothing good ever happens. I have been down and without a couple of times but luckily I had a few who never gave up on me. I know just how lucky I was back then. Many have not had those few lifelines to begin again with some degree of hope. Many are just lost in the bad and don't have any good fortune on their horizon. So they do what they have to do to survive. Which is to harm or take when it isn't their right to do so. Surely they are culpable for their actions but we as a society are just as culpable when we don't address the root cause of poverty, hunger and lack of education by whatever struggled circumstance.
     We see the poor and we condescend to them. We see the drug addicts and we blame them for their addiction when their addiction is the only friend they know. We have allowed our society to become top heavy greedy and selfish while vilifying all those who cannot fight with success for the table scraps that are left. I am not condoning actions the desperate choose to make, but I am calling out our society for leaving very few other options for those weary souls to choose from. This dog eat dog survival of the fittest crap is what is causing most of our society's ills yet we refuse to change or recognize that we can do better than this.

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