Sparing a Square: The Irony of Our Country in Comparison to Others
by Describes the conditions of other countries and our own, and the irony of how we act and the way that they do with these conditions in mind.
Africa is a well known continent for many of it’s hardships. It is said to have sixty percent of the world’s population of AIDS victims. Even in the countries with the highest prevalence, the life expectancy is only forty eight years. There are many wars, genocides, diseases, and is a continent with one of the highest poverty levels. Hundreds of people die here each day due to all of these factors above. However, not all is bad. People seek much joy in life even in these bleak circumstances. In many places the people raise the children of their village together as a whole community. People often help each other out. For example if someone dies and a relative cannot take in their children(or there is no relative to take in the children)someone within the community will. We are a country of great wealth compared to many other countries such as Africa. We have vaccines to prevent us from catching diseases(with very few exceptions). We have no genocides or wars here on the homeland.And our life expectancy is well up into it’s eighties with the modern marvels of medicine.
I think it is interesting that in comparing these two countries (and although we complain) we see that one is blessed with many more resources than the other. When guessing which one is most thankful for life and whose citizens help each other out the most- you would probably say it is the one who itself is blessed. It’s really sad if you think about it,here in America, most people do not know their neighbors, much less care to take in their children if something happens to them. We can see someone yelling for help because they are being beaten up or robbed and keep walking the other way because we “don’t want to get involved.” A homeless man can be sitting on our street corner and we look the other way-even when we have change to spare.Speaking of change, if we would profit and get ahead ourselves by putting our neighbor on the street we would. “Why should I care, it’s not my problem”-this is a very common saying in pertaining to multiple events surrounding the lives of others. We may have a sliver of compassion when we see the starving, AIDS children on television, but after that moment it is out of sight out of mind. We have the potential and means to help others most of the time but don’t.
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