4 Neglected Priorities of 2009*

Even though I don’t have a running theme here, I talk about what I want whenever I want and sometimes it is personal, anecdotal, or pretty general, I have been thinking recently about what we as a collective humanity have accomplished this past year, and what, in my opinion, has been shamefully ignored, by me, and many others especially in western society this past year. Weighty, huh?

Not that we don’t have other issues we are tackling little by little – gender and sexual orientation equality, health care reform, energy solutions, and responses to global terror and the spread of HIV/AIDS (and swine flu!), and that these issues aren’t hard enough to deal with on their own.

However, in my mind, the following topics cannot be ignored without dire ramifications to our societies, and should be talked about in political and humanitarian circles this year with a emphasis on what we can do and how it can help.

Here’s my list, see what you think, and think about what you can do:

1. Darfur
2. The Democratic Republic of Congo
3. Comprehensive Sexual Education for Children and Adolescents
4. Consumerism

DARFUR

It has been over 5 years since the genocide in Darfur started. To break this down, women, children, families, and communities, JUST LIKE US, except that they are in another country with a different political situation, are being killed daily, being raped daily, and are living without homes, necessities, and any independent recourse.
These persons are being murdered and assaulted by their own government, not because they are acting out against the government, but because they share the same ethnicity as that of the rebel group in Sudan who is waging a battle against their leaders. To me, this is the equivalent of September 11th happening EVERY DAY in Sudan, whereby innocent civilians are being killed because of an arbitrary connection that they have to a culture that others are in opposition to.

This conflict is akin to the Holocaust, to the Bosnian genocide, to the Rwandan genocide, and to other atrocities against humankind, except that in this case, the free peoples of the world, including the United Nations and the United States we are not intervening in an assertive, effective way after 5 YEARS of understanding the horrors of this situation.

It’s not as if I think that there are not other international emergencies that need to be addressed by the US and the UN, it’s just that I believe this is the largest, longest, and more severe situation currently plaguing the world right now, and that we are not reacting to it in the least. Since I don’t speak with authority on any of this, since all these words are just my views and quick observations on the matters, I dug a little, and found out that in the first 100 days of her post as US Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton did not act on Darfur. Not once. She did have multiple meetings with China and Russia, who pay for the weapons that the Sudanese government uses to attack its Darfuri civilians, however.

When I think of our “problems” in the US, about losing a job, about being in debt, about feeling lonely and like our carbon footprint is a little too big, I become even more adamant that we can all live a little while longer in this recession while we devote some of our time and resources to saving the lives of innocent people who have never even dreamed of indulging in such concerns.

THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGOI don’t want to fully depress anyone here tonight, so what I will say about the DR Congo is just that there are many issues and many failing responses in the DR that are starkly similar to Darfur and the Sudan. Murder, rape, political instability, ethnic violence, and a lack of safety and security for civilians have been present there for many years. Secretary of State Clinton has not addressed the issue in her first 100 days in office.

I think it is easy to start ignoring what goes on out of our own lives, but the need is still there to remember that we are interconnected, and when one person is violated or violates another, we all suffer, especially when we allow our consciences to gloss over our own responsibilities for one another. We can’t imagine the rage we might feel if someone we love was raped and murdered without any hope of justice, but we refuse to view other peoples loved ones with an ounce of that same compassion.

COMPREHENSIVE SEXUAL EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTSFinally, I am talking about a juicy topic! And one with more hope I dare say than the others above, since the REAL Act, or the Responsible Education About Life Act, was introduced this year by Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) to US Congress on March 17, 2009.

The REAL Act would fund programs with important characteristics, including:

• Being age-appropriate and medically accurate;
• Not teaching or promoting religion;
• Teaching that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid pregnancy or sexual transmission of diseases;
• Stressing the value of abstinence while not ignoring young people who have had or are having sex;
• Providing accurate information about the health benefits and side effects of all contraceptives and barrier methods as a means to prevent pregnancy;
• Providing information about the health benefits of condoms and other barrier methods as a means to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV;
• Encouraging family communication about sexuality;
• Teaching skills for making responsible decisions about sex, including how to avoid unwanted verbal, physical, and sexual advances and how not to make unwanted verbal, physical, and sexual advances; and
• Teaching that alcohol and drug use can affect the ability to make responsible decisions

So not everyone has been neglecting this important issue! But still, let me stress why it is so important.

I believe every human being should be afforded agency over their own physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional body. Sex, like money and other mediators of interpersonal power, can be used to dominate, intimidate, and oppress, as it can be used to build up lives and relationships, and bring great joy. So everyone should have the opportunity to understand their own bodily, mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional relationship to sex.

Basic education for every child as he and she develop can help them to know, preserve, and advocate on behalf of their selves as sexual beings, and to build their identities, and their families as they plan for the future.

My only opposition with the REAL Act is that it does not explicitly address homosexuality and how to protect yourself if you or your sexual partners engage in homosexual behavior. I strongly believe this is immoral when STIs, suicide rates, rates of substance abuse and depression, and unplanned pregnancy are all unacceptably high among young persons who engage in homosexual behavior because educational forums for this topic is unavailable, and so children remain uneducated and unsupported – in a word – neglected.

CONSUMERISM
And lastly, a topic which many of us like to be cynical about, and to blame other – the government, the big industries, the American Dream, for. I find it sad that when I tried to do research about what people are saying about consumerism, I did not see one article online written this year, but instead quite a few prophetic articles written from the years 2002-2007.

It is my guess that we are riding a very tenuous see-saw right now, whereby we somehow want to stop wasting resources/accrual of debt, but at the same time, we are stuck in a collective mentality that says both – Spending makes me feel good and important, and that we must spend ourselves out of our debt (I know, it sounds ridiculous, but then why do we do it?).

As a disclaimer, I want the government to spend lots of money reforming healthcare, improving education, and caring for the needy all over the world. But I also think we need to do a better job of speaking out against buying what we don’t need, or buying replacements for what we already have, just because we are used to it.

On my search, I found an article that I thought was preaching the same message we all grow up with, “You can’t buy happiness.” Then I looked at the research behind the article, which said that in fact, money does buy happiness. I assume that researchers correlated self-reports of life satisfaction with per capita income or wealth, and they found out that more money equaled more happiness. To a point.
What the researchers found was that “money consistently buys happiness right up to about $10,000 income per capita.” After that, life satisfaction stays the same or gets WORSE.

Now, to be honest, I have seen some articles this year on spending differently, on travel instead of on clothes, for example. But really, with $10,000 per person a year, how can we each buy our happiness.

I suspect even less travel, and a little more time GIVING, talking, reading, walking, thinking, laughing, and taking stock of how well our needs are so very often met even in the most tumultuous of times.

SO HOW CAN WE HELP???!



*Someone, many someones out there, spent their entire day focusing on this issue. They cared for others, for our world, and tried to make a difference in this area of betterment. They inspire me, and I want to thank them! YOU ARE AMAZING!!!