Striving for Unity

The world is divided.

Into 3 primary classes, the elite, the middle class and the minority. In these 3 classes there are multiple sectors each one ranked unofficially in society in accordance to the colour of their skin, their gender, religious beliefs, quality of their education, political opinions, sexuality or wealth, and to be honest these deciding factors should not matter. Yet millions of people are at a disadvantage as a result of them. Some of these people are at more of a disadvantage than others, some even losing their lives as a result.

So my question to you is… What have you done, or can you do, to show your support?

My guess is that a lot of people will say that they have donated, or campaigned for BLM or the “Me Too” movement or some other worldwide campaign. Whilst this is a good start there is still a lot more to do. Whilst your thinking about the question I previously asked, I want you to also reflect on if you have ever thought about those people or helped them in any way after the campaign was no longer popular. The reasoning for these questions is to get you thinking and to get you reflecting on your decisions.

Let me explain. I want you to think about whether you have personally gone out of your way to see what you could do, whether whilst you were campaigning for that trending issue you were actually empathetic and connected to the issue, and if the answers no, don’t worry about it! I’m pretty sure your not alone. Because from what I understand more times than not people jump on the bandwagon of a particular issue just because their favourite celebrity was behind it or because everyone else was doing it. This chain reaction may help in some ways like spreading awareness and raising money for an organisations. The problem is the effort is not sustained. What I mean by that is that once it is no longer in peoples ‘recommended’ or their favourite celebrity moves on the problem seemingly “no longer exists”. The whole issue seems to just disappear and only a proportion of people actually continue to express their interest in the issue. I guess what I’m saying is that just because something is no longer trending that doesn’t mean it has been solved. Long after the issue has been forgotten by the mainstream, others are still suffering.

These trending campaigns they come and they go, as does the support they gain. The ‘2020’ Black Lives Matter movement was actually born in 2015, but was raised to popularity again in 2020. Yes, there were many campaigns in between but there was significantly less attention paid. Do you think that black people were only disadvantaged in 2015 than left alone for 5 years just to be harassed again in 2020? I don’t think so. Yes there were people out campaigning in those 5 years, but they were also a very small proportion of the people who were donating and campaigning in 2015. My guess is that they had forgotten, there was a new trending campaign that had gotten everybody fired up, and the year after that was the same and so was the year after that and I have no doubt it will continue for a very long time. Do you see the cycle? People have very short attention spans. They lose interest in the issue before anything has been changed. They forget about the injustice before things are any different, which means things tend to stay the same.

I have no problem at all with trending campaigns, and absolutely no problem with people combining forces to fight for a particular cause. I actually believe that the use of social media to advocate a campaign is quite an intelligent and efficient way to do it. My problem with using online media tools to endorse campaigns is that there are so many campaigns to choose from. Although it is good to gain exposure to all different types of problems in the world, having so many options tends to make people jump from band wagon to band wagon. Going back to my previous point, that means that before any particular issue has been changed people have moved on. Or because there are so many different organisations to support the followers are divided and there isn’t enough support for any of the issues to make any real changes.

Although it seems all hope is lost and that we will never be able to heal this divided society we have created there is a way. You don’t need to be some form of super human or a world renound activist to create change. The truth is everybody can do it! We need people, ALL people, to discover a humane empathetic respect for one another, and essentially it all comes back to the way we treat one another. If every person makes a conscious effort to treat others as equals to themselves we will achieve peace. In order for this to work people have to understand that for the greater good they need to put their own opinions aside and work collaboratively with people of all genders, sexualities, nationalities, religions, political parties, and classes. I must admit it will take a long time, it will be a slow and drawn out process of healing, but it can be done. I have no idea how many people will read this but if one person reads this and passes it on and then that person passes the message on this could go a very long way. But if you are going to take anything from this article, let it be that you can make a difference. The world is not an endless pit of misery, it is a world of possibilities. It is a world where we prove time and time again just how intelligent we are. It is a world where anything is possible, including change.The person who realises this and believes in it and the human race, with the whole of their being, that person will be the change this world needs to see.

On the topic of people who are working to create positive change, I would like to acknowledge all of the incredible work being done on a global level. I would personally like to acknowledge and show my appreciation for those real life heroes who go out of their way to help others. Who, for some of them, dedicate their lives to serving humanity. Your efforts do not go unnoticed, not by the people you’re helping and not by me. I’m sure you’re all aware of how negative the media really is and how much people tend to gravitate towards negative news. But just because we quite rarely hear about these inspiring stories of success doesn’t mean they aren’t there. The world truly isn’t doom and gloom as there are so many wonderful things taking place each day.

So I hope you understand that the problem isn’t that there’s no good things happening, the problem is that there is not enough support behind them. So I really encourage you to get involved within your local community or even set yourself a goal to show a small act of kindness each and every day.

As I said before I don’t know how many people will read this article, let alone how many people will actually think about what I’ve said, but I will be happy if one person at least thinks about this after reading this article and I will be over the moon if someone takes this message and passes it on. Because you cannot attempt to climb a whole staircase in one go, you have to take it one step at a time. Keeping the end goal in sight.

Thank you so much for reading this article. I hope something that I have said as got you thinking or resonated with you. This is something really important to me and I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks again for reading, have an amazing day.