In terms of ideas floating around I saw an online video ad for refugee action that highlighted the application of offense as opposed to action. So what happened? A young man had a placard that says ‘refugees are scum’. He is having difficulty handing out flyers and eventually a man rips his placard off. Then it cuts to the young man in a similar situation but with a placard saying ‘save the refugees’.

The arguments against polite society are years old now. The ideas of putting up with people rather than actually interacting with them is the case in question. There are arguments for these types of tropes but what is society without some kind of decency? It goes either way in that the man with the placard is largely ignored in each case. What is missing though is what people can actually do when on the street in the first place?

People want to do the right thing and yet things go on as though that isn’t the case. The real rub is what can people do? What if you don’t like protesting or choose to protest? Does either position work these days? You could argue that nothing actually works anymore. Everything is broken. The system is locked down.

My own view is that people don’t have the skills to really engage with real world problems. For example people can’t deal with mentally unstable people in most cases. They can’t deal with things that are out of the normal flow of their lives. It is stressful and takes knowledge. People can’t know everything and they have a life revolving around specialised work and specialised activities. Politics is specialised as well as most career choices. Interacting with people can be based around certain behaviours and phrases depending on generalised knowledge and interest based on entertainment or current events. People can have a certain amount of knowledge about technologies based on abilities, socioeconomic position or interest. The list goes on.

Everything is in fact working but in a fragmented way that leads to proficiencies and deficiencies. You may know one language you may know more you could be living from paycheck to paycheck or have money invested. You may care but not have the means to solve an international crisis. For a case in point I dislike protesting because it can get pretty rowdy if not violent. I struggle week to week with finances and have to employ a lot of effort to manage week to week. I have a mental illness and struggle with reality. Though let me make this clear I am not going to buy into the argument that the planets refugee crisis is my fault and I should do more than care about it. That everyone is simply hiding behind politeness, nobody has any choice. They literally don’t know what to do.

Some entity with overheads say they can help solve the crisis. This is a business all of this doing and not caring. It shouldn’t be about entities tied into money. Sure money helps but it is more about leadership and military campaigns and refugee policies and general paranoia about accepting refugees. I wish there was peace in Syria and that my government wasn’t doing bombing runs but they are business minded and care only about corporate tax cuts and surpluses. I didn’t vote for them and I really dislike business agendas. But people keep voting them in. I don’t understand it in any way. They all seem to think that everything is broken anyway. People will eventually tire of the grind of centrist governments worrying about the economy from both sides of politics.

I remember an aboriginal artist did a print of Australia’s parliament house with the words, ‘the wind is changing’ this was in the 90s. It sure did change and the whole world has changed united on one front which is money while some countries are levelled to the ground. Governments have taken themselves out of the equation in a lot of cases. Look where money is leading us. People actually need knowledge and now knowledge is available if you have the money in the case of university. Although as I said even knowledge has its limits in regards to what you can and can’t know. There are things I am quite comfortable with that other people aren’t and vice versa. The biggest problem though is the people and entities who seem to think they know everything about everyone.