IMBALANCES...
(Publication Date: January 17, 2007)
While you were talking about the Lokmacı barricade, thousands of children around the world were working for you...
While you were discussing the Cyprus issue at length on TV, the world was struggling with obesity...
While you were cursing the Public Officials Amendment Bill, thousands of young people in our country and around the world were complaining about unemployment...
While you were using the isolation measures, etc., as an excuse and sitting back, the world was discussing how to increase its productive capacity.
While you were relegating science, art,
and education to second place, the world was educating its children in these fields...
You...........................................
***
As you head home in the evening,
15,000 African child laborers are working to produce the cocoa, the main ingredient in the chocolate you’re thinking of buying for your child.
You read this sentence,
feel a slight ache in your heart, lose your happiness for a moment, and then, while consuming chocolate—or anything containing cocoa—solely to boost the happiness hormone your brain secretes (serotonin), or to keep you happy or free from stress, 15,000 African children will be working to produce the raw material for chocolate they may never taste in their lives.
And the only thing those 15,000 African
children care about is finding water to drink and bread to eat.
This truth, which will cause a slight
stirring in your heart, will be tucked away in a corner of your brain to be forgotten as soon as you finish reading these lines...
Don’t worry; after something you do shortly, this truth will be nothing more than a piece of “general knowledge” to you.
The reason I’m writing these lines, which will mean nothing to you shortly, is that I want to draw your attention to an issue!
Imbalance...
This truth is actually
just one of the many imbalances taking place in our world.
*
Isn’t obesity one of the biggest problems the world has been grapping with in recent years, and one that now threatens the health of the modern world?
So, in which countries is obesity
most common?
In many countries with high
levels of prosperity...
Isn’t the United States the country where obesity is most prevalent today?
And isn’t obesity
the result of an imbalance?
*
Today, while dozens of young people are
unemployed in our country, people receiving salaries from several different places were working in government offices.
A completely imbalanced situation.
Fortunately, this situation is being corrected somewhat by the new law that has now been passed.
But the structure that emerges from this new “imbalanced” arrangement will itself become imbalanced over time.
Because new employees will be hired through favoritism, etc.
(I hope that doesn’t happen); those without connections will remain unemployed, and as a natural consequence, “imbalance” will come up again.
*
Doesn’t taking shelter behind the imposed isolation measures and living without thinking about “how to increase our production” create an imbalance in itself?
Hasn’t discussing the “Cyprus issue,” which has reached this point because of the “imbalanced” attitudes and behavior the world has shown us, cost us enough time?
Amid all this demoralization,
doesn’t it push us toward an “imbalanced” situation in science, art, and education—the greatest signs of modernization?
*
Although all these things may seem like imbalanced situations in themselves, that is not actually the case!
Because imbalances, within themselves and in general, create “balance.”
Those left out of jobs given through favoritism will find work through new political formations.
Today, while people are dying of hunger in one part of the world, people in another part will be dying of obesity.
Although the logic I’ve used in these few examples may seem very simple and straightforward at first glance, when you look at the details, you will encounter the “balance” created by imbalances.
The “balance” the world has created on an “imbalanced” foundation from our point of view has brought us to this point.
But, as in the examples I’ve given,
there will always be “balances” of this kind in the world.
What matters here is what we can do...
Unless we produce despite the isolation measures; unless we stand up against the “imbalanced” order created by the roles assigned to us; unless we try to turn the imbalanced “balance” the world has created in its own interests to our advantage—in short, unless we unite against all this, the imbalanced “balance” the world has created for us will continue.
To do all this,
we need strong, resolute leaders who can guide society in the right direction, just like our Leader of the Freedom Struggle, Dr. Fazıl Küçük (whom we remember with such longing these days), like Denktaş and their friends...
A message to those in office now...
See you Friday... Be respectful
in traffic!
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