This Day in Pictures..
 

BBC does a very cool feature that I check out every couple days:

"This Day in Pictures":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7002597.stm

They're very high quality pictures, and usually highlight all sorts of things going on around the world. What's interesting to me about today's is the major contrast between pictures 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Picture 5: "A Palestinian youth runs past burning rubble during an Israeli army operation in Nablus in the West
Bank."
* This kid looks like he's about my age; maybe a little younger. He looks scared out of his mind, and he's running past a burning car like it's the last thing he's going to see.

Picture 6: "Shia Muslims read the Koran during Ramadan in Karbala, southern Iraq."

Picture 7: "Men scavenge useful items from a polluted canal in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta."
*Guys who are waist (waste?) deep in a filthy canal, and you can see broken pots and pans, dishes, trash, buckets, etc. They're scavenging for "useful items." Probably the same things I can drive to the local Safeway in my air conditioned car and pay for with my credit card.

Picture 8: "Dresses from the 1950s are displayed in the Golden Age of Couture Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London."

--

Picture 8 seems like such a contrast to the previous pictures, and is almost an indictment of Western and Eastern European extravagance. While we're worrying about fancy dresses made in the 1950s, people in Indonesia, Iraq and Israel are struggling every day to stay alive, find shelter, eat, and not get blown up.

Doesn't this bother anyone else? The disparity of wealth and opportunity in the World is really starting to bug me.

Uh, it's been bothering me for years and years. Only whenever I talk to anyone about it, I usually get the glazed-over-eyes look.

Welcome to the Carnival! It only gets worse. :)

Is there a huge disparity? Of course. So, what are you going to do about it? Give half of your stuff away and go live in a barn?

It's all well and good to be incensed and upset about the conditions of other people in other lands, but I can tell you there are people in your country that are in just as dire straits. Does someone need to take a picture to make you understand that this disparity is everywhere and not just a western culture vs everyone else problem?

I beg to differ. There are not people in just as dire straits as millions, if not billions, of people in Africa and Asia. You're just willingly insensible if you really believe that. Yes, there are poverty-stricken people in America and I've no doubt that there are people who die of starvation and diseases of deprivation in America. But in Africa alone everyday there are on the average of 4 million people in the process of dying of starvation. Ever see the garbage dumps in places like Brazil and Bangladesh that are full of people waiting for the dump trucks so they can find something to eat? It's good that you at least acknowledge the suffering of people here in the states, but it's just ridiculous to compare it in any serious way to the suffering and privation that goes on in other parts of the world.

I wasn't comparing the two, I know that there is no comparison in terms of number, but there is a difference in terms of distance and ability to do some good.

Well, I'm not sure that distance equates to an ability to do any good.

And besides, just because it makes you feel helpless and perhaps slightly guilty (and I'm not speaking of you personally) it's no reason not to be keenly aware of the disparity. I think more awareness and less centeredness on self ('because I can't do anything about it anyway') would go a long way towards turning public sentiment away from self-centered materialism and towards a more globally-centered awareness and stewardship.

Or at least that's what I'm trying to believe so as not to hate my own species. :p

Sometimes, usually when I'm eating. At the dinning hall I'll often see people fill their plates to eat only at most a quarter of it, or simply not eat because they don't like the food. My favorite though was working at the cafeteria in a hospital. We would throw away anywhere between 20-40 untouched meals breakfast, lunch and dinner. Kind of makes you wonder how easy it is to take something for granted, and how many people don't have that luxury.

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"Surely, you're not saying we have the resources to save the poor from their lot?
There will be poor always, pathetically struggling. Look at the good things you've got."

That's just what popped into my head.

I choose to do both.

It no longer bothers me.

Life is not fair. I don't get to choose what family or what country I'm born in. It is completely random. Conversely it is also not my fault nor my responsibility to take care of them.

You may with your earnings. I am not interested in sharing with those that don't matter to me. My community of people matter to me, that is those that I live around, my friends, my family. They get first dibs on any of my extras, not some impoverished nation across oceans.