Perspective

[Strike For The South]

I lifted weights with a man from Hati for a little while. The guy always had the biggest smile on his face and just always looked happy. I never saw him have a bad day.

[Don Corleone]

When I was 18, I traveled to a section of Appalachia (one of the poorest rural sections of the USA) to build houses. It was over 100F every day. I dug a ditch to install a sewer line, insulated under the floor in the crawlspace (fiberglass AND chickenwire, yay!) and stuff like that. On the 2nd to last day, the lady of the house, who was supposed to be helping with sweat equity, showed up to tour the house. And she lectured us on every single bent finish nail, misalignment, missed paint stroke, you name it. After an hour or so of lecturing us, she packed her kids up, got back in her car, and left.

Well, I was with about 14 other kids (coed ) from my parish youth group. She wasn't 30 seconds up the road when we went on 'strike'. We threw our tools down, started yelling, called her every synonym for ungrateful we could think of. The pentacostal minister who was in charge of the job site (that was fun... appalachian pentacostal meets New England Irish/Italian Catholic kids) didn't say a word, he just let us rant ourselves out. When we were all done, he asked if we'd spent every moment of our lives feeling grateful. We agreed that no, we actually hadn't. Then he asked us how many of us had first hand knowledge of how bad it feels to be scourged, or to have nails hammered through your wrists, or crucified. We really felt sheepish now, and saw where he was going. Or at least we thought we did.

Then he asked if any of us knew what it was like to have a child die from a bacteria she got from a rat bite. We were horrified, and said of course not. He paused, got a little hoarse, then said "that lady does. This will be the first, last and only home she'll ever own, and the only one she'll be able to tell her children she was able to make safe for them".

You never know the whole story.

[Husar]

Never got around a lot so I've been spared from getting a real perspective, but I nevertheless got a bit of perspective through the media and maybe because my IQ is somewhere between 40 and 50 and not lower I was able to figure out that not everybody has it as comfortable as I do. Probably not the same as seeing it with your own eyes so go ahead and call me a rich kid that doesn't understand a thing.

Concerning your post Tuffy, the thing about creating a better life for other people, I think it's noble, even if you have to shoot a lot of bad guys in the process but I often wondered why so little seems to be done in that respect in africa until lately when I was happy to hear that europeans support democratic elections and peacekeeping there. Talk about the middle east and it's evil dictators all you want but people there are not starving by the thousands and I don't think they have as many children soldiers whosse families were brutally murdered and their villages burned down either, which makes me think we should really make a difference in Africa, the middle east is about to catch up with western values and democracy anyway or at least people there don't have it that bad, which is not to say they don't have any poverty there.

That's my perspective.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Never got around a lot so I've been spared from getting a real perspective, but I nevertheless got a bit of perspective through the media and maybe because my IQ is somewhere between 40 and 50 and not lower I was able to figure out that not everybody has it as comfortable as I do. Probably not the same as seeing it with your own eyes so go ahead and call me a rich kid that doesn't understand a thing.

Concerning your post Tuffy, the thing about creating a better life for other people, I think it's noble, even if you have to shoot a lot of bad guys in the process but I often wondered why so little seems to be done in that respect in africa until lately when I was happy to hear that europeans support democratic elections and peacekeeping there. Talk about the middle east and it's evil dictators all you want but people there are not starving by the thousands and I don't think they have as many children soldiers whosse families were brutally murdered and their villages burned down either, which makes me think we should really make a difference in Africa, the middle east is about to catch up with western values and democracy anyway or at least people there don't have it that bad, which is not to say they don't have any poverty there.

That's my perspective.

Africa needs to be dealt with. It is the leading international source of poverty, corruption, disease, and widespread violence. I'm sure that the African people will have interesting things to say if we get everyone and their mothers to stop stepping on their throats.

[Fragony]

To borrow something from AdrianII, stop teaching them how to be africans. China has done more good for africa then all the charity organisations combined.

[Husar]

To borrow something from AdrianII, stop teaching them how to be africans. China has done more good for africa then all the charity organisations combined.

Are you trying to say that all the raped women, children, the children soldiers and whoever else is oppressed, tortured, killed etc actually want it to be like this?

[Fragony]

Are you trying to say that all the raped women, children, the children soldiers and whoever else is oppressed, tortured, killed etc actually want it to be like this?

What I am trying to say is that we should stop throwing them banana's. But on to perspectives.