Today's 3Talk showcased the winners of a leading South African magazine's Sexiest Person Awards, both male and female. In my honest opinion, the female winner (Jeannie D - host of Top Billing) is far from fit to win such an award. Though she is pretty, the title is 'Sexiest Person' and facing facts, she is definitely not the sexiest. While I do understand the awards are based on personal opinion, and subject to the judges' personal tastes in what characteristics make someone 'sexy', the thought on how she won is still beyond me. Personal opinions aside, though, let me rather get back to the point of this blog post: Dignity...
Call it what you will - self-esteem or self-respect - it still boils down to one flaw in our human nature; pride. Whether you agree with me or not on that aspect, we all need to agree that pride is a negative feature all human beings have within them. It is this aspect to our self-beliefs that has caused us to be so physically conscious - not in terms of looks but in accepting what is legally and socially right. If we could view ourselves in dignity, as a whole (both spiritually and physically), there would not be a problem with it, but it is our human flaws that limit us from seeing the true, underlying negativity we have created for ourselves and for our societies.
Rape is considered a serious issue worldwide, but is it really? It is true that every day thousands of women deal with haunting memories of the horrific ordeal from their past, but look at what I just did there. I said women, and not one person can honestly say that that comment did not stick out in their mind as sexism. It is because of this idea of physical self-worth that is brainwashing us into an opinion on social etiquette that is both sexist and immoral.
Each day millions of men and women are subjected to the adverse effects of abject poverty and malnutrition while a small percentage of the world's population live in grandeur, with a mansion situated on that proverbial greener grass on the other side of the fence. Is this not a raping of a 'dignified life' every person should enjoy? A 'dignified life' you probably lead, adorning your body with designer clothing and expensive jewelery. The 'dignified life' that is only accessible through capitalistic living and economic promotion of companies that continue to degrade the lives of the already struggling poor community. But while you clothe yourselves in such physical luxuries, it is the poor that have enriched their lives, emotionally, to the point of true dignity that any city-dwelling socialite will never reach.
So is it not them, that have learned to live life for it's true meaning, that should benefit from the luxuries you and I take for granted?
Role-reversal ideas aside, surely it is these people that we should feel sympathy for. That our hearts should yearn to save, that our prayers should be directed at. I'm not denying the emotional damage caused by rape, it is truly a traumatic experience, but we cannot (because of our personal attachments to physical things) denounce all human emotion towards those affected by capitalist greed while pouring our hearts out to a circumstance only because we have no personal loss in speaking against it.
We have created a world where inanimate items have a higher worth than that of human life, and unfortunately we will continue to stagnate further and further into a state of emotionless existence until we completely lack the ability to show compassion completely. It's time society, as a whole, stops living for the moment and starts making the moment live for them. When you do a crossword, you don't attempt a guess before reading the clues. But, in life, mankind has begun to do the opposite, we've portrayed societal images without looking at the deeper meaning of life and it is only when we reverse that, will we truly be able to live in dignity, with a compassion for ourselves and society as a whole. When we will truly understand life's true meaning and be able to live accordingly, and not in a world of sexist hypocrisy.
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