It's about time Humanity stopped acting like a whiney teenager, clinging to the easy ways of childhood and resisting the growing demands of responsibility with angst.
Here's the tough talk someone, somewhere along the way gives to most of us: living with other people carries certain responsibilities.
Enough with haggling about how much responsibility you should have. Reality is reality. If life were fair, a whole lot of things would be different. Some people have to do more, pay more, be more than others, and that's just the way it is. Some people get a free ride, one way or another. Who cares? Suck it up, buttercup. It's not about what's "fair" or "right" from our miniscule perspectives, what we "should" be doing. It's about something very basic - a life. Each one.
Not a life without pain. Not a life without suffering or loss or difficulty - there is no such thing. But, there is no reason on Earth, with all humankind has accomplished, why every single human could not inherit, as birthright, at least basic safe shelter, hygiene, and access to the necessities of life.
There is not one reason on Earth that this is impossible. Wait, there is. One reason. People suck.
That's the only reason. We don't want to do it. We don't want to announce, with one large, Human voice, that we are going to set the minimum at basic safe shelter, hygiene, and access to the necessities of life.
The cynics say, why SHOULD I be responsible for other people's failure to thrive? Fools. We are responsible. We are just not taking responsibility. Should has nothing to do with it. Quit worrying about whether we should have to, and accept that the human community owes itself at least this much.
The bleeding hearts say, survival is not good enough, what about DIGNITY? Fools. All over the Earth, Dignity is so far away you can't even see the bus station to get there from here. Quite wasting time and insist on the minimum floor, instead of rejecting it. Don't stop there, by all means - fight for your beliefs. But accept the minimum as a first step.
We don't want to stand up for the minimum, for all sorts of interweaving reasons that have nothing to do with whether Kara dies of thirst today. We don't want to, so we don't.
If we wanted to, we would say it loud and clear. We would engage a ten-year study into the ways to make it happen. We would establish short and long-range plans. We would guess what it would cost, and insist that our economic system provide that through a combination of pricing for resources, fair wages, human life-cycle benefits (pensions and family requirements included) and public infrastructure. We would embark on a fifty-year planetary goal of making it happen. Or a hundred year. Or a thousand year.
And we would do it.
But we won't. And that is why people suck.
