thoughts on a thursday: please ... don't keep calm

i am pretty sure pretty much everyone in the english speaking world (and beyond) has seen this print.

there are numerous variations such as 'keep calm and go shopping', 'keep calm and eat chocolate', 'keep calm and smile smile smile', 'keep calm and love jesus', 'keep calm and don't give a shit' - or my personal favourite 'keep calm and use the force'. 

i think these posters express pretty well the general sentiment of our generation. people generally keep calm.

we keep calm, ignore starvation and keep on wasting our resources.

we keep calm, ignore the climate change and keep on driving big cars.

we keep calm, ignore responsibility and just want to have fun.

however, i believe that by doing that we are denying essential human attributes: compassion, empathy, anger, hunger for change and the respect for our own life as well as the lives of others.

stephane hessel writes the following in his book indignez-vous (time for outrage):

The worst of attitudes is indifference, to say "I can do nothing there, I'l just manage to get by." By including yourself in that, you lose one of the essential elements that makes the human being: the faculty of indignation and the commitment that is a consequence of it. 

They [young people] can already identify two big new challenges: 

1. The huge gap which exists between the very poor and the very rich and that does not cease increasing. It is an innovation of the 20th and 21st centuries. The very poor in the today's world earn barely two dollars a day. The new generation cannot let this gap become even greater. The official reports alone should provoke a commitment. 

2. Human rights and the state of the planet.

he is right - it is time for outrage. -- so, get angry.

get angry about the injustices and absurdities of the world.

get angry about the fact that we can buy clothes that are produced in sweat shops.

get angry about the fact that we waste 4000 litres of water on one steak whilst children in parts of the world die because they don't have clean drinking water.

get angry about the oppression of women and disabled people.

get angry about racism.

get angry about the fact that our society values money over people.

so please, i urge you, do anything, but just don't keep calm. 

it's hard out here for a bitch

i stumbled across a quote the other day which said something like

"feminism ends when you meet 'the one', communism ends with an annual income of 25k and atheism ends when the airplane is about to crash."

for me this does not only sound condescending towards other's people's views but also quite uninformed.

i am not an atheist myself but i have quite a few friends who are atheists and their unbelief is not a matter of circumstances but they doubt the existence of god for evidence related reasons. 

and yes, there are people who wear che guevara t-shirts and anarchy stickers when they are 16 and later in their lives vote for the conservative party, but i would not call them communists.

well. and feminism is not about hating men. it is not about being single, or a lesbian. 

feminism is about empowering women, it is fighting for respect and about reclaiming the right to make one's own decisions, to define your identity yourself and to stand against objectification. 

and i don't think a girl met "the one", if he makes her questioning her self-worth and stop wanting others to respect her.

i leave you with this song, where lily allen puts it so perfectly: 

there's a glass ceiling to break, there's money to make,

and now it's time to speed it up 'cause i can't move at this pace

we've never had it so good, we're out of the woods,

and if you can't detect the sarcasm, you've misunderstood.