Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Social Woes?
I was reading the news this morning and I stumbled across an article regarding France.
"PARIS, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Life has not improved for the inhabitants of France's poor, ethnically diverse suburbs ... High unemployment, underperforming schools, poor relations with the police, inadequate housing and controversial new immigration laws have created a generation of frustrated youths ready to turn to violence at any time ..."
Immediately I realized that this article could have been written so as to replace 'France' with 'United States' and still be accurate. What does that say about our society in general. It appears that both the United States and Europe are facing similar problems regarding education and unemployment.
I don't think poor education, unemployment and inadequate living conditions are something new to anyone as these problems have persisted in certain regions of the world throughout history. I do however believe that they're becoming larger issues in the traditionally more developed countries and something we as a society are going to have to address before they become a trigger for a host of other problems that span the globe.
I don't want to get into a long winded discussion of my feelings on this topic because I'll start rambling about class societies and other things. At the moment I only have one question. Is all this simply a product of our respective governments or does it point to some other underlying social issues?
Well, I'm not going to write a term paper in your comments section, but I do not agree that these issues have become any worse over time. France is similar to the U.S. in that they have a large immigrant population now. The poverty is just being displaced into their country from other countries because they, like the U.S., refuse to recognize their immigrants as full class citizens - France is even worse about this because they are such culture nazis. The same way that neighboring cities and neighborhoods often shuffle around the homeless to each other, because they simply run them away without providing any meaningful help, we perpetuate the cycle of poverty by constantly refusing to acknowledge them as citizens.
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by Jerry Timms @ Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:56:00 PM
Very interesting. I don't know if I'll have room to fully comment on this, but I think this condition is a nature course in society's development. The world is faster becoming a smaller place -- less to explore / exploit. The last few great leaps in our society (.com, post 9/11 trends including war, and the real estate boom), haven't had the staying power of say an industrial revolution or a post WWII. Couple that with the pop culture attitude that everyone wants to be at least semi rich and semi famous, and you can see the divide between want and attainable grow. In short, everybody wants more (or at least enough) without the means to actualize it. 8 years ago I wrote a report detailing how I thought the future would unfold... I predicted focused vs liberal education, emphasizing specialization on the trends of the times. Those who are successful will quickly adapt & exploit these trends, those of middle class will support these efforts, and beneath will be people that haven't adapted to the speed and trends of modern society. Any return long term stable employment and lifestyle will come with monumental, consolidated projects -- and I don't think our generation will see this. Definately discuss when next we meet.
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by jeremiah @ Wednesday, November 28, 2007 2:55:00 PM
