Why?
I don't like when people are incompetent. I don't like stressing myself out. I don't like missing class. I don't like all the rules about how you go to school till you can make money and then you make money until you're about to die and then you die. I don't like all these expectations and I don't like being looked down upon. And I really, really don't like my birthday. But that's okay. I can deal with all those things. I just need a little time.
People make me sad.
The other day at lunch it made me sad because there was a conversation about how some people's parents are particular about the race the person their child marries will be, and nobody really...thought it was a big deal or anything. They didn't believe it themselves but they didn't care if their parents thought and enforced it, and that just made me really sad and scared and angry and uncomfortable because it's just COLOUR. It's just a PERSON. All you should be worried about is if they are a safe person who is not harming your child and if they are making your child happy. Gender, colour, heck, the AMOUNT of people anyone wants to be involved with--as long as they're HAPPY and SAFE and CONSENSUAL. It scares me that prejudice like that still exists. It scares me that it's so close to me. It scares me that nobody else seems quite as scared as I am by it.
Then in law class we talked about a rape that happened where this high school football team was getting all these privileges around town. Some of them went to a party and found a fifteen or sixteen year old girl who was so drunk she'd passed out. The put her in a car with them and two of them violated her while the other three took pictures and they had a bet going to see who could urinate on her first. When the girl found out what had happened, the next day, she and her parents called the cops. And nothing happened.
Apparently Anonymous got involved and the case ended up going to court. But the three witnesses wouldn't talk until they received full immunity, and so they did. Apparently the two convicted boys were all crying and bawling when the verdict came but honestly, if they'd gotten off the hook, I bet they wouldn't have even felt sorry. I bet they would have gone home and laughed. Because they had raped someone. How does that happen??? How do teenage boys not have the morality to say NO, this is WRONG, I should NOT have sex with this unconscious underage girl and laugh about it with my friends. What would it have taken for one of them to think, NO, I should NOT take pictures of this or let them take her anywhere or bet about who can urinate on her first? What would it have taken??? A gun to their heads? Her screaming? The police??? What would have made them not laugh and say, "And the song of the night tonight is "Rape me" by Nirvana!" How come there was nothing in them saying NO, saying STOP, saying YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING HORRIBLE. It's scary, it's so scary.
Why is there nothing that makes people think, "It's not right to kill this man because he owes me money," or, "I would be doing something bad if I followed this drunk girl and forced her to have sex with me," or, "I am not better than this person because I'm white and he's black." These things are so fundamental and natural to me, why is it so acceptable to them?? Why is it like this, why don't people instead think, "I should buy this homeless person a bag of groceries because I earned a bonus this week and I can spare the money." Why isn't there more kindness and giving instead of selfishness? There are people out there who give even when they have little themselves, be it time or money or something else--and then there are people out there who the more they get the more they want and it's never enough and where do you draw the line? And I don't understand it and it scares me, that not everyone thinks doing the right thing should take priority over everything else. It makes me ANGRY and SCARED and I want to CHANGE things. I NEED to change things because everybody's unhappy with how things are but everybody's to scared to stand up and DO something. It's too big. Someone with more power should do it. Someone with more status. Someone with more power. Someone with more money. Someone with fewer kids and fewer responsibilities and less to lose. SOMEONE has to stand up because two hundred, three thousand, a whole country of people aren't going to just up one day and say, magically, "Hey. I'm going to change something by just changing this one thing I do and there are thousands of other people doing it with me so it's not so scary anymore." A big company isn't just going to say, "Hey, we're a multi-million dollar company. We can budget to send x amount of bread to a third-world country because I don't need my six figure bonus this year." I don't GET it. If I was in their position I'd do it. If I was a millionaire I wouldn't move to a bigger house and get a bigger car and buy bigger gifts and better clothes. I'd DO something with it. Whether it would be buy 100 000 dollars worth of food for a food bank or send it to build schools and farms and wells in places that need them or a whole bunch of things til i'd spent everything I didn't need, I'd do that. It's not RIGHT that I can sit here even in all my lower-middle-class-ness and have so, so, so much more even just in my basic freedoms than other people have. It's not RIGHT and I want to use that to my ADVANTAGE to make a DIFFERENCE but I don't understand why people don't want to. I don't understand why people can't just be nice.
The world could do so much more if we were just nice.
People make me sad.
The other day at lunch it made me sad because there was a conversation about how some people's parents are particular about the race the person their child marries will be, and nobody really...thought it was a big deal or anything. They didn't believe it themselves but they didn't care if their parents thought and enforced it, and that just made me really sad and scared and angry and uncomfortable because it's just COLOUR. It's just a PERSON. All you should be worried about is if they are a safe person who is not harming your child and if they are making your child happy. Gender, colour, heck, the AMOUNT of people anyone wants to be involved with--as long as they're HAPPY and SAFE and CONSENSUAL. It scares me that prejudice like that still exists. It scares me that it's so close to me. It scares me that nobody else seems quite as scared as I am by it.
Then in law class we talked about a rape that happened where this high school football team was getting all these privileges around town. Some of them went to a party and found a fifteen or sixteen year old girl who was so drunk she'd passed out. The put her in a car with them and two of them violated her while the other three took pictures and they had a bet going to see who could urinate on her first. When the girl found out what had happened, the next day, she and her parents called the cops. And nothing happened.
Apparently Anonymous got involved and the case ended up going to court. But the three witnesses wouldn't talk until they received full immunity, and so they did. Apparently the two convicted boys were all crying and bawling when the verdict came but honestly, if they'd gotten off the hook, I bet they wouldn't have even felt sorry. I bet they would have gone home and laughed. Because they had raped someone. How does that happen??? How do teenage boys not have the morality to say NO, this is WRONG, I should NOT have sex with this unconscious underage girl and laugh about it with my friends. What would it have taken for one of them to think, NO, I should NOT take pictures of this or let them take her anywhere or bet about who can urinate on her first? What would it have taken??? A gun to their heads? Her screaming? The police??? What would have made them not laugh and say, "And the song of the night tonight is "Rape me" by Nirvana!" How come there was nothing in them saying NO, saying STOP, saying YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING HORRIBLE. It's scary, it's so scary.
Why is there nothing that makes people think, "It's not right to kill this man because he owes me money," or, "I would be doing something bad if I followed this drunk girl and forced her to have sex with me," or, "I am not better than this person because I'm white and he's black." These things are so fundamental and natural to me, why is it so acceptable to them?? Why is it like this, why don't people instead think, "I should buy this homeless person a bag of groceries because I earned a bonus this week and I can spare the money." Why isn't there more kindness and giving instead of selfishness? There are people out there who give even when they have little themselves, be it time or money or something else--and then there are people out there who the more they get the more they want and it's never enough and where do you draw the line? And I don't understand it and it scares me, that not everyone thinks doing the right thing should take priority over everything else. It makes me ANGRY and SCARED and I want to CHANGE things. I NEED to change things because everybody's unhappy with how things are but everybody's to scared to stand up and DO something. It's too big. Someone with more power should do it. Someone with more status. Someone with more power. Someone with more money. Someone with fewer kids and fewer responsibilities and less to lose. SOMEONE has to stand up because two hundred, three thousand, a whole country of people aren't going to just up one day and say, magically, "Hey. I'm going to change something by just changing this one thing I do and there are thousands of other people doing it with me so it's not so scary anymore." A big company isn't just going to say, "Hey, we're a multi-million dollar company. We can budget to send x amount of bread to a third-world country because I don't need my six figure bonus this year." I don't GET it. If I was in their position I'd do it. If I was a millionaire I wouldn't move to a bigger house and get a bigger car and buy bigger gifts and better clothes. I'd DO something with it. Whether it would be buy 100 000 dollars worth of food for a food bank or send it to build schools and farms and wells in places that need them or a whole bunch of things til i'd spent everything I didn't need, I'd do that. It's not RIGHT that I can sit here even in all my lower-middle-class-ness and have so, so, so much more even just in my basic freedoms than other people have. It's not RIGHT and I want to use that to my ADVANTAGE to make a DIFFERENCE but I don't understand why people don't want to. I don't understand why people can't just be nice.
The world could do so much more if we were just nice.