Pointing fingers!!

Well it's easy to point fingers and show the problems other countries have. But fact is that we are talking about switzerland. Not other coutnries or continents. So I will keep my postings only to talk about Switzerland.

Yes that what you say it's true, Switzerland is not perfect. It's a country where humans live, and humans are not perfect. Still, for such a small comunity, the uproar created by topics of racism, indiference is quite disturbing. It's pitiful that the same goverment is aware of this kind of problems and had to create institutions to address this kind of behaviour among the masses. Even worse is that organizations like the UN calls a country because the behavour of a country is not appropiate toward human rights.

Hiding with arguments like "Are we the salvation army?" just remind me of people that don't care. Once again indiference. I'm 100% sure you are one of the persons that as long as it's all well on your side you don't look left or right. So you think just because you have it good it's not your problem? People are dangerous, and specially people in needs. People that are needed are sometimes driven to act beyond the limits. Criminal rates go up, robberies. And the "innocent" (aka indiferent) average swiss will look shocked to the kind of things that are happening in their countries. What's worse, is that what the kind of help you are thinking of it's just money. Money is not the only way a person can solve this kind of problems. It's not the only way to help either. Pointing people to the right authorities, to the right person, using your relationship with others to help someone. That is also part of helping people. And yet most swiss turn their face away. Even doing a 5 minute call to the social welfare to say: "Hey I got someone here who is starving and has no shelter, where should I take this person to?" Becomes a burden to most swiss, and they just prefer to ignore it because it's easier, it doesn't break their daily routine of waking up going to work, go by and buy some groceries at the store and get home for dinner.

Just another example of our everyday bern life, since I'm in bern at the moment. Tram stop, there's an old lady that suddenly falls ill to the floor. Nobody knows what happened, most people decide to look away, take the tram and continue with their lives. Friend and I got aware and tried to help her, got an ambulance and did all what we could do to get her to a hospital. After all, it's a human life. Friend started asking others why they chose not to help. The most common answer was that it was too much of a trouble and it would ruin their appointments.

About the 14 year old girl. She wasn't ilegal. She was born swiss and died as swiss. When the mother needed her family at her side NOBODY showed up to help her. Even tho they lived on the same town. (This is an extreme case, still one I've only seen in switzerland). The reason the family gave was that they were busy with work.

This doesn't concern just the needed persons, it concerns us all. If you are not willing to be a part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Who is a self-destructive person? The one who makes others aware of the situation and wants to make changes for the better? Or the stupid lame idiot who decides to ignore it? Treating people as if they were some statistic of marginalized persons is the same as beign a racist and in some cases even worse.

You are the one to choose, you are the one who wants to either help or not. It's not about others it's not about institutions, at the end it's all about if I helped someone when you had the means or not.

By the way: The use of vulgar terminology doesn't make you look smart, not in the internet, not in your every day common life. But that's a question about education and decency and continuing on the subject would derail the whole discussion.

AnotherSwiss 18 Aug 2008, 01:46 - Report