Percepções da vida

Perceptions of life.

In the tuk-tuk on the way to work, a woman in rags was begging at some traffic lights. I remarked to Paulo that she looked poor and troubled. ‘Ela não quer trabalhar’ (she doesn’t want to work) was the response, which I found thoroughly depressing.

However, congratulations to those the world over who have successfully demonised the destitute and labelled them as lazy, as it’s the parlance do dia (of the day), here and everywhere.

It defies rational thought that someone would voluntarily leave themselves open to destitution, to the scorn of everyone who in reality is only one sacking, bout of illness or mental breakdown away from being in the same situation. Yet to disguise the lack of our own empathy and because we’re embarrassed that society has become so hardened, we trot out some ultimate bullshit that the reason that someone is barely clothed, barefoot and begging for scraps in traffic fumes is that she’s opted not to get a proper job.

In human society there’s a constant disconnect between people’s judgement of situations and the actual lived human experience, and only with open-mindedness and empathy is this ever going to change, starting with our leaders and media, who are so influential in planting these mindsets.

The current state of perceptions vs reality plays out in all manner of ways:

- in judgement that someone destitute has made bad life choices, when everyone really knows that if they find themselves equally desperate they would expect help and reject the idea they’d brought it on themselves  
- in criticism of asylum seekers who seek to save and better their lives on another patch of land, when everyone really knows that they’d do exactly the same in that situation, given that fear and danger are greater drivers than respecting an arbitrary line on the Earth’s surface
- in opposition to same sex attraction, a natural phenomenon, when everyone really knows if they were attracted to someone of the same gender, they’d want to act on it and not live a lifetime of suppressed sexuality and celibacy

I feel like most people would agree with this logic, yet we all plough on within a society that largely thinks otherwise as a collective. We certainly don’t vote for the empathetic way forward. This I find difficult to reconcile.

This week I have two reports which are proving fairly torturous to complete. A Kylie Minogue song played as I was composing some text and I had a strong pang of jealousy that Kylie will never have to write a grant report for the US government.