Problems

This morning I turned on the TV do have a Christian church program running. The person talking was decrying how there are countries where people are killed for being Christian and denied access to Christian literature.

Once again, I feel I must say that I am not religious so I can't fully comprehend how people react to the type of situation that the man talking was talking about BUT...

If people are really concerned for the welfare of others perhaps they should examine all of the terrible things happening in their own neighborhoods before trying to fix the problems of the world far away.

There are TERRIBLE things happening around the world. There are terrible things happening in the USA. Perhaps it is easy to overlook the terrible things happening near our homes when there are TERRIBLE things happening far away because the things near us are so commonplace and average. Perhaps it takes something truly abominable to peak our interest.

What does that say about those who choose to ignore the local problems in favor of the far away problems? I think it says that they are, at best, misguided. I think it says that they are afraid of the local problems because they may know some of the people causing the problems and/or some of the people suffering. I think it means that people are too afraid of the average, mundane terrible things that are happening near them because they know that those things could happen TO them. The TERRIBLE things that happen far away are abstract and "couldn't happen here."

I think EVERYONE would be better off if EVERYONE focused on the issues affecting their local communities more.

Let's work on eliminating gang violence here in the USA rather than jihadist activities where one religion is fighting another in a far-off land. Let's work on ending homelessness and hunger here rather than sending BILLIONS of dollars of aid to other countries to feed their poor (and have them hate us for it). Let's focus on bringing equality to all parts of our country rather than trying to stop genocide and gender oppression elsewhere.

Do the other places need help? Yes. But so do we. I'd rather focus on making the lives of people near me better each day before we send huge amounts of help to places far away.

Maybe I'm selfish for wanting to keep the aid here. To fix HERE before we try to fix other places. To make HERE a more desirable place to be. To make HERE a place that will continue to grow and thrive rather than degrade and fall apart.
Some of the people we are ignoring who need our help pay into the system that sends their money away. Think of how much more help they could get if they could keep the resources that are taken from them (by the government) instead of having those resources go to a foreign country.

Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe not.
Maybe I just see that the world has LOTS of problems and trying to fix them all at once will see none of them fixed. Maybe focusing on a manageable problem set means that that problem set CAN be fixed. When it is we can move onto another one.

When one spreads their resources too thin NOTHING gets accomplished; like the highway construction near my house. The Southbound off-ramp to my house closed in August for a one-week re-paving. It's STILL closed. They just changed the sign (again) to say it will be closed until 12/3/10. Mid-August to 12/3 is a REALLY LONG week.

We're doing the same thing with the world's problems: trying to fix too many at once and not getting anywhere with any of them. We should change that.