And I can relate that in an instant. I know this dude. I knew his poor story just after he's back in the safety net, and I condemned myself right away that I never asked how he was. In a time, he had to kept sleeping just to avoid his hunger. That happened after weeks of eating instant noodle - after even his smallest coins run out.
This friend of mine is a well-educated, kind and idealist person who might easily get a respectable job - he chooses to get a job of his ideals. And he's surrounded by other activists, too. Those who talk about poverty, labor rights, equality, transparency and accountability - on daily basis. Those whose speech on social media are flowery with classic jargons, workshops and meetings, international initiatives, so much of it. And where are they during his hardship? Away.
People love to talk about general ideas. But we forget to apply it in micro - in our closest cases, in our daily lives.
And let's move on from this friend and examine us.
You. You who speak like you're real proletarian, do you even have friends from the real class? Did you consistently reflect the proletarian values in your life? Did you choose to do so, or when you have more luxury alternatives it'll fade away? Did you share your food with those who are hungry? Did you educate any of them, or you found yourself curse on them more often instead? Did you bear the cross of hating them, disgusted with their habit, but decided to stick around?
If you chat with the poor or the labors 1-2 times and you feel like you're part of them, shame on you. If you befriend 1-2 activists whose job mainly getting drunk and blame the government for not giving them enough money than you're totally misunderstand the fight, my friend. This is the shit that I despise, the middle class half-educated people who takes "cool" jargons and put the labels onto themselves just because it's cool. I tell ya, gentleman, you give those people who really dedicate their energy, their life and money on the street a bad name. When you, or me, do this kind of shit, we are no more than those beggar who dress in street punk style but don't know, moreover carry, the punk spirit with their daily life.
I had my portion in 2015, I pour a significant amount of my energy, my vision and efforts, to help the kind of people I thought I wanna help in real cases. And in addition to the joy and an urge to do more, from it also grew my hatred, my disgust to the kind of poverty that makes poor people try to seek advantage in development projects. I mean, like real money advantages. That's why I become much more careful in posting things that reflect the bold general ideas that generalizes things - because I examined its assumptions, and the fallacy associated with such assumptions in real world. And I felt, sadly, how my feeling twisted, from sympathy to antipathy, from the faith in development projects to careful examination of its negative impacts and its donor politics evil. And I found more faith in little things - where the values reflected perfectly, where I can believe the people I help or work with, not distorted just because some people are more evil than the others. I became more careful in gathering the data, including how the consistency of my feelings in different cases, to support generalization, instead of supporting a theory just because I like it.
It's great, and necessary, if you consistently make a call to resolve a structural problem in a macro language. In fact, we need you to keep calling, keep watching and keep shouting to hold irresponsible parties do what they should do. But don't forget to reflect your call in your individual level, too. Changes happen from us, or it'll eventually reach us.
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