The Meek and The Earth

And the Lion and the Lamb shall lie down together...

“⁴Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ⁵Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. ⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Matthew 5:4-6

It’s a common theme. “The meek shall inherit the earth.” “Those who were last shall be first.”

In our current society, the idea that the meek will get anything but thoroughly stomped on is a happy lie the quiet and gentle people tell themselves when they’re being beaten into the dirt yet again. Sometimes it’s fear, sometimes it’s compassion, and sometimes it’s just easier to stay quiet. I know that for me personally it’s fear and lack of confident knowledge that holds me back from saying anything, from trying to ‘fix’ the world. I try in my own way, but always with that feeling of hopeful despair. 'How can I possibly make a difference?'

Even the word meek shows the depth of the degradation of this idea. Once upon a time, Meek meant gentle, kind and courteous. In the dictionary now, this is considered an ‘obsolete’ definition. The definition of Meek now is submissive, spineless and compliant. What a strange turn of events. Maybe it’s not the meaning of the word that has changed so much as the collective agreeance that kindness is weakness, being gentle requires you to be a door mat, and those that are courteous are only going to be taken advantage of.

Once upon a time, it was understood that the meek – the gentle, kind, compassionate and loving – would be valued and respected. Who knows, maybe it’s still within our grasp. Perhaps the world will change drastically enough that all those who are first – the overbearing and the ambitious – will become last. So far, in my short and sheltered 24 and a bit years on this planet, I’ve seen the cruel and the ambitious get ahead over and over again. I’ve seen it in my own life. When I am cruel and grasping, I get further in my life than those times I am kind and caring. Those who know no shame have more chances to achieve the current success metric.

You can see it in the way our society functions. Corporations rule our existence. The moment we step outside ourselves, we are bombarded with advertisements, suggestions and orders to buy this, do that, think this. ‘Big Business’ throttles the little guy and gets away with it. How did we get to a point where a tobacco company can take on a country in a law suit and win? It’s legalised murder. Simply because the little people have no money and therefore no power. Just look at the news, social media and the internet to see how many reports there are of business taking on the people and grinding them into the dust. All in the name of greed.

But there is a tsunami of change coming. It has been building for longer than I've been alive. It’s resonating throughout the human collective – more and more people are ‘waking up’ to the idea that commercialism is just a different type of slavery. Society is slowly shifting. Illusion is no longer the theme of the day. There are people all across the world standing up to say that it’s not right. 

It’s in our fiction and our entertainment, it’s in our news and in the back of our mind when we look at the world around us. It’s intriguing how our Pop culture reflects our changing beliefs.

We had an ‘attractive’ vampire craze a few years ago - a symbol of rape and power over others, willing or otherwise. Vampires suck blood and leave a husk, or a slave in its place. They are the ultimate apex predator, preying on us with all the caring of a man eating a steak. Even the romanticised vampires are dangerous and deadly. Is it any wonder that we liked the idea of giving ourselves up to something stronger by saying ‘I’m not good enough, take me’? It’s an enticing idea for some people. Particularly young women (like me) who are trying to find their place in the world and wishing there was someone to protect them, keep them safe from having to think.

After that, we progressed to the zombie phase, where society were happy to be mindless shambling followers, going through the motions exactly as they were told. We got mesmerised by our technology and gave up on free will and conscious thought. We wear, eat and buy what we’re told and follow the rules as laid out by big corporations. The closer we get to the ‘norm’ – the success metric that our society lives by; owning your own house, having kids and a stable job – the further into the trap we get. I don’t think we’ve entirely left this phase. I think there’s quite a way to go until it happens.

But now we have the superheroes, standing up and fighting back against impossible odds, never giving up no matter how regular people look down on them. We have those who will not go silently

into the night. They fight for even those who revile and threaten them. They fight for what is right, no matter the cost, without reward or hope of gratitude. They exist only to save the world. Whatever the threat may be. This is the stage where we wake up and start seeing that these heroes are not aliens from other planets, but real people like you and me. All of them have something that gives them power, placing them a step above us, but not out of reach. It’s a fine line to walk.

There are cases where they can trap us just as easily as the idea of zombies or vampires – we see the world in terms of other people stepping up to take on our problems, so we sit back and let it happen. But there is also the flip side. Some heroes inspire greatness in those with no powers. By giving us an example, showing us the way, they tell us it’s ok to strive. It’s ok to be more than you are. One of the defining traits of a hero is their ability to stand up and say; ‘No matter what you do to us, we will never completely stop fighting. We will come back again and again, beating odds that would crush anyone else.’

Obviously these are all just symbols, to be interpreted however you might want to see them. There is much more to the story than any one person can ever see completely. The truth can gleam and glimmer at us, but we still see it only through the cracks of our own psyche. Each person will see something different and call it their truth.

My rather abstruse point here is that change is happening now. Maybe the meek will not inherit the Earth, but then again maybe they will. It depends on what choices we make as a society. What ideal, what image are we going to fit our future into?

Give a Dollar a Week, End Homelessness in a Year

Imagine a society where the collective community could make a direct impact on some of our country's biggest social issues. Imagine crowd-funding an end to homelessness.

In theory, it's simple. If every Australian gave $1 a week for a year, that would be over $23 Million dollars a week for 52 weeks. That's $1.2 billion in a year. It works the same way that our taxes do, just on a smaller scale. But instead of having an elected group of representatives choose where to spend our money, we could designate where our contributions go. 

Before I get too far in to my grand ambitious idea, I’d like to stress that this is not solely my idea, or even a new one. I first discovered this concept in a stunning book a friend gave me called A Fraction of The Whole by Steve Toltz. Since then I’ve also discovered Huey Long’s plan to Share the Wealth in 1934, along with a few other interesting articles, like this one on what would happen if the world’s total wealth was redistributed amongst everyone in the world equally. And this one on homelessness. Our values as a race are very slowly shifting, and society is starting to question the status quo.

For now, I’d like to discuss a very small change each of us could make that could have massive impact on Australia as a country. Bear in mind that I’m not an expert. I’ve collected some research, made a few calculations and drawn some conclusions. I make no assertions that they are correct. I'm human. Please feel free to do your own research and calculations. Maybe you will come to a different conclusion.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), in 2011-2012 the average household worth of all households in Australia was about $728,000. But the median was $434,000. This was due to the asymmetric distribution of that wealth – the top 20% had about 60% of the wealth, the top 40% had about 81% of the total wealth, and the bottom 60% of the population had about 18% of the total wealth. (The extra 1% is due to rounding down. It's still in there somewhere.) They also gave the statistics that over 1.2 million households had net worth less than $50,000, with 114,000 of these households having negative net worth.

There are about 23.66 million people in Australia as of November 13^th 2014. As mentioned above, if every one of them donated $1 a week, or had someone donate on their behalf if they don’t fit into the 67.5% of Australian taxpayers, there would be a pool of about $23 million to distribute every week to those dis-advantaged families. If we started with the people who have negative net wealth, and distributed it evenly between the 114,000 people, they would then receive about $200 a week. It doesn’t seem like a lot, right?

Here’s where the next stage of my idea comes in.

The definition of homelessness, as per the ABS definition established in 2012 is the following;

“When a person does not have suitable accommodation alternatives they are considered homeless if their current living arrangement:

·         is in a dwelling that is inadequate; or

·         has no tenure, or if their initial tenure is short and not extendable; or

·         does not allow them to have control of, and access to space for social relations.

The ABS definition of homelessness is informed by an understanding of homelessness as 'home'lessness, not rooflessness. It emphasises the core elements of 'home' in Anglo American and European interpretations of the meaning of home as identified in research evidence (Mallett, 2004). These elements may include: a sense of security, stability, privacy, safety, and the ability to control living space. Homelessness is therefore a lack of one or more of the elements that represent 'home'.”

As of 2011, Homelessness Australia gives the figures of people experiencing homelessness as 1 in 200 people, or about 105,000 people. This is spread fairly evenly among age ranges, from children under 12 to over 75’s. More than a quarter of those are under 18 – roughly 28,000 children. And 6% – or about 6300 people – are currently living on the streets or in make-shift dwellings such as tents.

I have a couple of friends who fit under the heading of ‘Home-less’ simply because they don’t have the money to move out of their current situation into one where there aren’t too many people crammed into a tiny space. They have no opportunity to ‘control their living space’. Occasionally, when there’s no one else home, they can have people over for social interactions, but most of the time, they’re expected to go out to be social or sit in their room and be quiet to minimise the impact on the ‘important people’ in the house. What would it be worth to them to be able to have their own space?

During my periods of intermittent work, I experienced the very real fear that I could soon be ‘home’-less. Which could quickly have turned into ‘roof’-lessness without the support of my family and friends, who were there for me through the difficult times. What about those who don’t have access to support from their friends and family? They would have nowhere to go, and no way out. You can’t get a job without a house. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the community extend a helping hand?

Imagine walking past a homeless person on the street and dropping $200 into their bowl. I know I’d feel pretty amazing if I could do that. Wouldn’t you? So why don’t we? What’s stopping us?

I can’t answer that for you. I know I don’t because I have bills I have to pay, groceries I have to buy, and when I do have spare money, I have a car in serious need of repairs. I can’t afford to give away $200 just like that. But I can afford $1 a week. I’m betting that you can too.

While doing my research for this, I found out that the Greens have a plan to end homelessness by 2020. As stated on their website;

·         Providing a new home for every rough sleeper by 2020 would cost approximately $233.2 million per annum.

·         Doubling funding for Specialist Homelessness Services provided under the National Affordable Housing Agreement would cost $507 million per annum.

·         Signing a new National Partnership on Homelessness to 2020 would cost $160 million per annum and would be matched by the states.

That adds up to 900.2 million per year. Which would still leave 295.8 million per annum that we could put to other great causes. Wouldn’t that be an incredible accomplishment?

Now imagine that we could keep that giving going for 5 years. At $1.196 billion a year, that’s $5.98 billion over the 5 years. It's not a massive amount in the grand scheme of things, considering that (from what I can tell) Australia's Total Taxation Revenue was roughly $400 billion during the 2013-2014 financial year. But there are a few different ways we could make a difference.

We could;

·         Fund a collective social revolution that calls for a change in how we deal with members of society who have been marginalised and forgotten.
·         Further causes that will directly benefit our society, such as sustainable energy – for instance, the Solar Roadways I like so much, or basically anything that cures us of our dependence on rapidly dwindling natural resources.
·         Assist the community in other ways, like funding research that may have been passed over by higher-profile fundraising.

·         We could make a contribution to a global cause, such as ending world hunger or extreme poverty, and extend the hand out towards others in countries that don’t have someone to look out for them.

I could go on forever. There are any number of ways this could be used – by the people for the people. It’s such an amazing concept – if we all shared a little of our wealth, not even enough to ask for a sacrifice, we could make such a difference to our country.

*Disclaimer: This is my opinion, drawn from the information that was easily available to me. As I said before, I make no assurances that what I have said is correct. I encourage you to look into it yourself. And if you find that I'm wrong in any way, I'd love to hear about it. I’m also more than happy to discuss this idea. If you have any questions, issues or ideas, please feel free to comment.