Injustice
Shopping, boat tours, festivals. Hong Kong seems to be the place to fulfill all your deepest dreams and start living the good life. In order to enter my university I have to cross a massive mall that has a cinema and an ice skating rink. But hey, wait a minute, Hong Kong is also a place with one of the highest densities of homeless people.
More than half of the homeless in Hong Kong has a full time job (I rely on a professor of mine for these facts). But apparently having a job does not necessarily mean that you can actually build up a stable life with the salary you earn. This article is not meant to become a hate-report on my current home. This would not only be highly inappropriate (being a guest with hardly any knowledge about the place yet), it would also be really hypocritical; my problem with Hong Kong is the same one I have with living in luxurious Europe.
Poverty exists and is a very serious issues for many parts of the world. My personal and most shocking encounter with poverty took place during my year in India. Working with children who are only allowed to go to school because their mothers need the tent they live in to prostitute themselves? Not necessarily a job that changes your mind into a “We deserve our wealth, we work hard for it” or “What can I do, I am only a poor (European) student” kind of direction.
My problem is not only this ignorance, but especially the egoism that comes with all the privileges I have. Every cocktail I drink, every trip I make could and should be used for the survival of someone else. Pretty much everything I, and we as a society as a whole, do, is based on the misery of others. How can we live with this guilt (and for me there is no counterargument to the fact that we are the ones who have to change)? The only reason we are rich is because others are poor. YAY, we are the winners of capitalism. But where does this leave us? Each of us could do more to help others, I am convinced of that. Still, we like to keep a little extra here and there for our own pleasure. Because “we deserve it”! But we do not. And this thought makes me miserable.
