by RaySingle » Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:33 pm
People in the western world are less aware or worried about the poverty that's rampant through most of the rest of the world for some reasons.
First and primary, the sheer successfulness in the western world, especially the US, insulates most of their citizens from the severe realities that so many more people around the globe have to endure. as well, in the case of the US, it's a country that's physically lonely from the poorest regions of the world.
Secondly, there are cultural assumptions and taboos that make it less probably for people in the West to learn about the economic and social injustices that exist around the globe. One of these is the myth of the individual starting out at the bottom and increasing to the top: while there are cases where someone has risen from poverty to great success, the simple fact is majority of people that rise to the top were born pretty well close to the top already. Access to adequate education and work is largely reduced among the poor. This also relates to the taboo, especially in the US, against acknowledging the reality of class differences and the struggle between classes. The poor, when they're acknowledged at all, are blamed for their asperity, and most efforts to help them are considered futile and subesequently financial support for such programs is cut. By contrast, the 5% of Americans that own 95% of the money of the nation live in a world of such elegance and successfulness that not only could most Americans not recognize it, but majority of people around the globe could think the wealthy were aliens from another planet. still, consensus is made through the media among the general voting populace to support policies that favor this aristocracy and its corporate underpinnings.
This leads to our next reason why the West is less worried about conditions in the Third World: the media. The fact is people in the West, exactly the US, don't really know much, if anything, about the outside world, because the corporate media has no interest in maintaining journalists in obscure, far removed countries to cover stories that either reveal how corporate interests are actively working to keep the impoverished regions of the world oppressed and exploitable or that majority viewers simply arent all that interested in anyway.
What the West has still to learn is that access to adequate education and work anywhere and everywhere in the world IS a national security issue. People that have good jobs and good homes are typically too busy enjoying their lives to take up the arms of war.