jack_rawstone

The Asian tsunami is a natural disaster of biblical proportions, a real wrath of God event the likes of which have not been seen in recent history, a call for solidarity among men to save lives and do good. But exactly a year before 43,000 died in Iran, why has everybody forgotten about the plight of the almost 100,000 left homeless? Because it is no longer packaged, bubble wrapped and brought to us for our daily consumption. Bono no longer cares, hes moved on, and in our useless disposable, consumer society that means we dont care.

Humanities plight as a whole is not something to be given on a monthly basis, edited, stripped clean and brought to our TV screens. Its easy to forget in our fickle, MTV, speed junkie world the suffering of millions across the world on a daily basis. Low levels of response to the aids crisis means 70 million people will die as a consequence within the next 20 years, thats almost 10,000 a day for the next two decades. Poverty, contaminated water, war, famine, continual suffering on a global scale, just because the cameras are not there does not mean it has stopped happening.

Weve all got access to the worlds most powerful news medium ever; the Internet and that means there is no longer an excuse to forget. Misery across the globe is not something we should only be concerned about when the media decides we should. It is always there and always will be, exercise some moral fortitude and remember.