2024-12-22
tags: none
Words: 237 (1 minutes to read)
(This is entry 52 of #100DaysToOffload)
Christmas time is a bit of a strange one. In developed countries like ours, we spend the days preaching giving, generosity, goodwill to all. We preach Christian virtues, and disavow Christ.
And then, what do we do as we preach good will to all? We distribute chocolate to children: manufactured elsewhere by poorer nations, inadequately paid, poorly treated, often enslaved. We give our children gifts: manufactured elsewhere, by people in other nations working, again, under slavish conditions. We eat turkey and roast beef: slaughtered on a mass scale, resulting in huge ecological harm; naturally the suffering to the animal raised in factory farm conditions, transported then slaughtered; causing psychological damage to the underpaid, poorly treated staff at these facilities (who can often go on to pass their trauma onto their wives and children through subsequent abuse)...
And then, we feel good about it. We feel happy, as if we're being good. As if we are gentle people. As if we care.
It's a time of happiness for all - or at least, all that we care about.
We never have to see the people we abuse, all just to feel a little merry.
Good tidings to all.
ps. I don't mean to say that we in the developed world are bad people. We're unaware, often, or never have to feel the harm caused, by the actions we take. We may be the perpetrators, but it's not just our fault.