Luxury is in the eye of the beholder is the crux of Kathleen Beckets’ article, V&a asks: What is Luxury? I had never thought about luxury in this way before, but when I did, I thought of all the people that are less fortunate than I who would think that the vegetables that I repeatedly toss away after dinner are luxuries. It is a very clichéd thought but I feel that it is labeled a cliché by the people, like me, who do not do enough to help the millions of people who do not know when their next meal will be, or even where they will sleep.
Our Garbage
His luxury
Why is it acceptable that Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, is worth $55 billion dollars, enough money to run a small country, while nearly half of the world’s population lives in poverty? Upwards of 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, more than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, less than $1.25 a day. 22,000 children die EVERY DAY as a result of poverty. I still cannot fully comprehend the severity of these numbers and this is not an area that I have looked into before, but that in itself is a problem.
Our society amazes me by the fact that the people in countries as well off as America, myself included, worry about Bruce turning into Caitlin but not about any real problems. In the time it has taken me to develop this post thus far, 4,736 children have died. I am most likely going to forget about this post the second after I post it because of how emotionally devastating of a topic it is to think about. I don’t know if you guys can relate but I want something to be done for the less fortunate but I don’t see myself doing anything to significantly impact the problem.
I think that as soon as I post the article, I will move on and not act on any of what I am feeling right now. I just don’t understand why this happens. Why do we walk past the homeless on the street, is the overused excuse that “they might use the money I give them for drugs, so I won’t give” good enough? I realize that I am exactly the type of person that I am criticizing and that bothers me but not enough to start handing a dollar to every homeless I see, but not enough to travel to some of the most problem-ridden parts of the world and doing something to help.
It is crazy how ignorant and selfish humans can be; myself included. I agree that if we all took a step back and looked around at the important stuff going on in the world, we can truly see all the different problems going in front of our face. After realizing all this though, what is there for us to do? I know we can start small, but will that really get us anywhere? I feel that the world today is too egocentric for us as a people to create any long-lasting solutions. I wonder what steps you think we can take upon ourselves to really make a difference.
The word “Luxury” is one of those words that (like we learned in philosophy) is vague or ambiguous… What defines a luxury for a child? For a parent? For a girl? For a boy? It can be so many different things, and there’s no one luxury that everyone agrees on. For a child (like the article mentioned) it could be that ice cream 7 times a week, and for a mother it could be a week at Canyon Ranch resort and spa. It’s interesting that there was an exhibit dedicated to exploring this word. You connected the theme of this article to a conflict that is very important to our day to day lives… how can we use our “garbage” (or rather things we don’t value enough to be our luxuries) to help people who view the same things as their own luxuries?! There are so many different organizations that target communities in need, but yet we are still facing a great problem that needs much attention!
Your blog post does a really good job at raises issues that need to be addressed, however your viewpoint is over pessimistic in my opinion. For instance the World Bank reports that, “The number of people living on less than $1.25 per day has decreased dramatically in the past three decades, from half the citizens in the developing world in 1981 to 21 percent in 2010, despite a 59 percent increase in the developing world population.” The world adapts, grows, and improves not because it is filled with people like Carlos Slim Helu, but because the world is filled with people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who rather give billions of their fortune away rather than say they are richer than they would be otherwise.
As humans, I feel like we are always complaining about not having the things we want. We chase after the latest I-Phone, complain about not getting the right car for our 16th birthday and wish that we were born in the Kardashian family. When we compare all our problems to those who live in the third world countries, our problems would seem like a small deal. But after realizing that there are many who are more unfortunate than us, many of us don’t take any action. After all what can we do? How can we directly help those who are more unfortunate? Does a dollar to the homeless man on the street really help solve his essential problem of not having a home? Does a donation to charity really goes towards what it claims it does? It is the fact that we don’t know what we can do that holds us back from taking actions.
This post really stuck with me. Sometimes it’s hard to take a step back from our busy lives and think about the less fortunate. I think a problem in the U.S., one that I’ve noticed frequently in NYC, is that there’s a social stigma against giving to the poor. If you give to someone on the street or on the subway you’re either considered some sort of hero or you’re given dirty looks from the commuters walking by. I’ve gotten that look more than once if I give a dollar or two to someone on the subway. I like to think that they’re using that money for good instead of bad, but there isn’t a way you can possibly tell, so I just hope for the best. If you give a quarter to someone on the street you shouldn’t be considered a saint or feeding their drug addiction. You should just be considered human.
I think we all empathize with you and with this post, though it was a little cynical. We want to give something, but we don’t think it will make a difference. I categorize needy people by situations of bad, worse, and absolute hell. When I see people our age begging on the streets, I think “They are in their physical prime. They can easily work.” Then there’s homeless disabled people. Finally, there’s the life of poverty in a third-world country. I’m sure there are levels in between but the comparisons make us pause; the aid might better serve someone else. I still think that we can help when possible, even if it’s just giving a homeless person the untouched portion of your lunch.
I notice that luxury is a word that needs context. I completely agree with you in that what may seem like waste to someone like you or me, would be a fortunate luxury to stumble upon. However, the sentiments that you express, I feel, are not uncommon. There is a lot of skepticism involved with charity. Is our effort going to matter? Is it going to go the the right place? And I feel that this sentiment is often a limiting factor in our charitable behavior. However, there is also a common sentiment of disbelief and disagreement with the prominence of poverty and the existence of the mega-wealthy. For someone to be work 55 billion dollars seems absurd. In fact, it seems like there just isn’t enough to spend on one person to occupy 55 million dollars. And I feel that the two sentiments battle each other within our society to become the prominent attitude.
I really think you bring up important points about our materialistic culture. Our so called problems are nothing compared to what people have to deal with day to day basis. We complain about waking up early to go to class, some people dream about having education and they risk their lives to learn how to read. We complain about the wrong temperature of our coffee, others don’t even have clean water. It’s seriously embarrassing how self absorbed our society has become. Our daily necessities are considered luxuries elsewhere. We not only need to appreciate what we have more, we need to come up with ways to help those living in extreme poverty.
We live in a very busy and hectic society, which could explain why people might have difficulty sustaining empathetic feelings towards the less fortunate. However, I agree with you that something must be done about this issue. Poverty should not be a problem that exists considering the amount of wealth that circulates in modern society, but it is an unfortunate truth that many of the richest citizens do not feel obligated to help in areas as serious as this. That being said about poverty, I have to disagree with your opinion about Caitlyn Jenner’s transformation, because I do think it’s an important topic. Many transgender people live day to day in a state of misery over society’s unwillingness to accept them. Many are abused, many are harassed, many are murdered. If Caitlyn Jenner revealing her true self allows people who are transgender to feel better about themselves, as well as making society let go of certain stereotypes, then I do think the media is being productive in this situation.
Ahmed, in your post, you brought up a very provocative argument. While I by no means consider myself a bad person, I do not do nearly enough to help those in need. There are children dying of starvation in Africa, but today alone I ate three full meals. Some of those children don’t see three meals a week. Your post has made me question my responsibility to those who are hungry- to the 4,736 children that have probably died since I started writing this comment. Surely if I went to Africa to help those children I would make some minute difference, but I won’t go. Instead I will continue to live my daily life and chose to forget as you said, ignoring the problems greater than the ones fed to me by the media. It is a sad reality, but I feel as if through the years, we have distanced ourselves from the guilt of ignoring those in need, in order to better suit our busy schedules.
I deeply enjoyed your post as it brought up many controversial arguments. I think it is important for people in well-developed countries to be reminded of how the other half suffers in the world. It puts our own lives into perspective and makes us realize how important it is to give back. You mentioned some interesting statistics detailing how many people die each day as a result of poverty and how more than three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. The reason you and so many of us cannot “comprehend the severity of these numbers” is due to a phenomenon known as psychic numbing. In my high school psychology class, we learned that people tend to feel less compassion and tend to give less when the suffering in question is systematic and affects larger numbers of people.
I think the only way to combat such an indifference to wide-scale inequality and suffering in the world is to be reminded of our huge luxuries and remember who can not enjoy them.
your post really emphasizes the fact that we often take what we have for granted when there are many more who are less fortunate. It raises the issue on morals and ignorance. I, myself, agree and understand when you say also we may raise an issue and see what is right from wrong there seems to be hardly anything that I can do to help the problem. Your answer to the question “what is luxary” shows us how little we know and how powerless we are. I believe that is an excellent example of what the arther of the article was trying to get at. This was a very engaging article that posed important points about our ignorance and selfishness.
I completely agree with everything that you have stated in the article, because I have experience the same feelings that you have stated. I have many times thought about the starving kids in Africa and other world countries when I throw out leftover foods or I see my friends wasting food. However, I still can never bring myself to give a dollar here and there to the many homeless people I see in New York City. I think that is this a more human characteristic issue rather than a issue on the people not caring. I state this because it is a natural instinct for human to be selfish. I think we as humans have just evolved to be selfish because if we weren’t selfish and donated everything we have to the less fortunate, we will one day become the less fortunate. This is also very similar to the theory of survival of the fittest, which is why the thought of our trash being someone else’s luxury never stays in our mind for too long.