a soliloquy

A few days ago, I watched a documentary on Liberia. (http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-1) It’s a short documentary, running at around an hour or so. A group of white guys decide that they want to go to Liberia since not many people know what it’s like there. I for sure didn’t know. 

For one, I didn’t know where Liberia was located on a map. I didn’t know that they had had two civil wars in the past thirty years, nor did I know that Liberia was the 3rd poorest country in the world. 90% of the population lives under $1.25 a day. The life expectancy is around 44 years old and 85% of the population is unemployed. 

Of course, I was shocked to find this out. As I watched the documentary, I learned that nearly 80% of the people who fought in the Civil War had exhibited cannibalism at one point. Child soldiers fought and smoked heroin, and even bragged about raping women at gunpoint. West Point, one of the worst slums in the world, is literal hell; plumbing is nonexistent so people use the beach as their toilet. 

The next day after watching, I couldn’t get my mind off it. How could such atrocities exist in the twenty-first century? I felt guilty, having complained about the most trivial problems, when children there were faced with life-threatening adversities on a daily basis. 

And…these feelings of guilt slowly faded. I forgot about Liberia, about the kids there that couldn’t find food, about the women that got raped and beaten on a daily basis, about the thousands of people killed in the Civil War. My mind returned to its normal thoughts: what I wanted for Christmas, or how unfair my life was due to personal problems that are extremely trivial. 

It’s a cliched situation. I learn about third-world countries, about people who have a much harder life than me. I feel sympathy. And then it all fades. It dissipates from my mind and I forget about it, reverting back to my ways of “first-world problem” complaints. I think we’re all guilty of this, to an extent. It’s extremely hard not to worry about these so called first world problems, because those are the ones that are most troubling to us. 

There’s all that talk about being an upstander. About doing whatever you can to help. I try to give what I can to charities and be aware about the world that I live in. But I can’t help but feel that’s not enough. I know this, and yet, I decide not to do anything about it. It makes me feel horrible for a moment, and then I go back to surfing Reddit and not giving a damn. I’m seventeen; not much is expected of teenagers. But in this day and age of the internet, where being aware is the cultural norm, I know that 

It’s a shitty cycle. Care, don’t care, care, don’t care. One day, I want to get so rich that I can become someone like Bill Gates, who is basically single-handedly wiping out malaria. It’s a nearly impossible goal, but it’s a dream. If I can do a fraction of what someone like Gates did then I’ll be happy. 

For now, I guess it’s back to the cycle. Tomorrow will be a “don’t care” day. 

tl;dr : “Kunu is a selfish asshole who doesn’t help children in need”