"Every one of you is a guardian"

In a world of six billion people, survival is an important part of life. India is a perfect case in point; where in a country with a billion inhabitants, the act of merely getting a place to sit on a train has become something you could easily be maimed over. Capitalism, consumerism and industrialisation are the key proponents of inequality in democratic countries, but in all other types of economic models that have tried and failed, poverty and inequality have always been enduring problems.

Should the CEO of a large corporation be allowed to have a Lear jet and a castle in Scotland while the employee who manufactures his products in a Chinese sweatshop earns less than a dollar day? Is it right for an actor to get paid millions of dollars for appearing in one movie while 246 million children around the world are classified as child labourers? Should the entertainment industry be glorifying sex and the objectification of women when a million children are exploited by the commercial sex trade every year?

“Every one of you is a guardian, and responsible for what is in his custody. The ruler is a guardian of his subjects and responsible for them; a husband is a guardian of his family and is responsible for it; a lady is a guardian of her husband's house and is responsible for it, and a servant is a guardian of his master's property and is responsible for it." - Prophet Muhammad S.A.W. (taken from Sahih Bukhari, [Book #46, Hadith #733])

This saying indicates how far we have strayed from the natural order of life, responsibility, justice and humanity. Many guardians seem to have turned a blind eye while their wards are violated in plain sight.

This puts me in mind of another quote:

"The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues." - Rene Descartes

Money and the acquisition thereof is the primary objective of almost every human being on this planet. Even if we don’t like the system, we toil away at whatever we can to make a living for ourselves and our families. For people who live above the bread line, money is something we always need more of, because we are always desirous of the latest technology, a better car or our own home. Money is the primary source of stress, a leading cause of divorce and it makes those who have it think they are better than those who don’t.

Recently, I had the privilege of sitting in on an HIV workshop for refugee women and one of the things I noticed was the huge divide in desires between the haves and have-nots. The facilitator asked each woman in the room to say what made them happy. The non-refugee (and obviously better-off) women who were there to assist, like myself, said our families made us happy, or gave some arty-farty intellectual response to this question. But almost every single refugee sitting at that table said that two things made them happy; food and money.

"One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

So apart from a lot of talk and no action, what is the point of this post? Maybe to remind all of us that this is the world we live in. We may not be able to change it by ourselves, but walking past the person sitting on the roadside with our noses in the air, while we wait for our governments to sort out the mess is just plain hypocritical.

Maybe we need to find a way to pass on our skills, be they in agriculture, English, computer literacy or entrepreneurship to the people who need it most. Perhaps we need to mentor a disadvantaged person, or adopt an orphaned or abused child.

What we don’t need is another million-dollar talk shop for our leaders, where little or nothing ever gets accomplished.

"A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities." - Dalai Lama

We also need to be so much more vocal about the things in our society that we know are unacceptable and unjust. Up until now, we have never spoken out. But laissez-faire may just be passé for 2010.

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s foolish to think that one little blog post could change the world, or make this broken, overpopulated, sick world an altruistic utopia, but if we all exhorted one another to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong (to paraphrase the Qur’an), perhaps we would be less likely to forget.

I will climb down off my soapbox now, but not before I leave you with these beautiful words of wisdom from the Mahatma:

"The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles."
Mohandas K. Gandhi

Peace,
Hajira