Where did all the shame go?

The image of a fat sultan, bathed in swathes of rich fabrics while dining on fabulous meals in some exotic desert tent full of belly dancers, is not a hard one to conjure up. The happy go lucky punter at the races holding the winning ticket, face alight in top hat and tails, likewise comes easily to mind. Now cast your mind to a squalid council estate. An obese mother of three, decked in stained tracksuit, struggles with a Tesco bag laden push chair across a litter strewn courtyard. Amoungst the graffiti marked shutters and closed down shops is a lone betting outfit, fag ends and old racing posts tumble listlessly by the door. Contrast this again with a plump farmers wife baking cakes while her husband toils in the field. Through the window you can spy the farm hands sneaking in a cheeky game of cards, recently paid wages the wager of choice . These are all examples of currently vilified sections of British society, namely fat people and gamblers. The only difference is that some of the imagery makes you smile and some makes you twist your face into a scowl. Why? Context.

The sultan is rich beyond compare. He's allowed to be fat. Plus it fits your image of a sultan. The Farmer's wife would be jolly and plump and an amazing baker of cakes. Of course she's a little large, that's how farmers wives are supposed to be silly (interestingly if she were thin, she'd be mean, controlling and bitter, right?)! The grinning winner in top hat at the races? He can afford to gamble his money away... And a game of cards never hurt anyone.

The obese mother, well, she can afford to spend all her money on cake! What about her kids? All fat too, I bet! Those rotten men, gambling their money away on the horses or dogs, what a waste!

Follow these images in your own mind... How do you imagine the positive and negative world of drink and gambling? In nearly all cases I'll bet your own private imaginings meet this simple rule...

If it's a negative image, it because the cause of the distress in underpinned by a failing in society to deal with a problem. The farmers wife will still die of obesity related disease. The rich toff may still ruin himself with gambling. But somehow that was not societies failing. The mother of three has never been shown how to survive on a budget. She only knows to buy fat and sugar laden foods that take the misery of her situation away for the precious few seconds it takes to stuff the doughnut in her mouth. The all to brief sugar high the cheapest fix she can get.

Whatever the affliction, it's a stark reminder of our own failings. Why can't we overcome this? Why can't these people be made better?

And so we move to the issue of, predominantly, young people getting totally and utterly wreaked. I mean out of their fucking tiny minds, in the city centers up and down the country. The government solution is to put up the cost of booze. They really are the best minds the country has to offer, hu?

My solution is to find out how society has fucked them up so that they think that represents a good time. Then deal with it, no matter how unsavory the cause.

The inevitable Joseph Kony post.

Kony2012. Surely I don't have to tell you what it's about, do I? Really? OK, it's about Jason Russell (a media / film maker type guy) who met a young man by the name of Jacob Acaye in Uganda. Jacob had been abducted by the undoubtably nasty Joseph Kony in 2002. Jason promised to bring Kony to justice and has since meeting Jacob waged a kind of running media battle for action. You can watch the orignal video on YouTube here : http://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc
Watched it now? Good. Then let us continue... Well, actually, before I go any further, Let me say I really like that there are people in the world that actually do things about stuff they think needs to be changed. If the world was full of people like me, they would only write about what they think needs to be done. Power to you, Jason. Now - let us press an imaginary fast forward button and zoom forward six months. The campaign has been a tremendous success. Kony is caught and put to justice. The sentence would almost certainly be the death penalty (as I write this, Uganda is considering this measure for being gay, so I can only imagine what they would do to someone who has actually done something wrong). He hangs, fries, chokes, or whatever. Yay! Hooray for justice! But what has actually happened here? Exactly the same thing that always happens to African countries when they get in the shit. Some foreigner swoops in the saves the day. What happened to THEM doing something about it? What happened to the people that are affected by something actually doing something about it?

I don't think they are lazy. I do not underestimate how terrible it must be to live like that. I do not lack the empathy to comprehend what it must be like to watch your brother have his head hacked off for trying to escape. However...


Let me give you a personal example. I'm shit with money. Throughout my twenties I had to go back to my parents a number of times on the beg for some cash. I was earning, sometimes quite a lot. I was a supposedly intelligent guy but I was consistently spending more money than I earned. I was consistently committing the same mistake over and over again. The reason for this is that I was able to see hope of salvation in a third party, namely my parents. 

Transpose this situation. Imagine I was Uganda. Uganda is historically used to foreign powers walking in and "helping". They have lost the power of self determination. They have lost the self confidence of a country that decides what happens and to whom. Let them work it out, however long it takes. In the long run, it will produce a country with identity. A country that will not take shit. A country that would not have allowed Kony to thrive. Who knows, maybe even a country that wouldn't have produced him in the first place.