Read and annotate whichever of the 4 readings–“Digging in the Trash,” “Strangers on a Plane,” “My Right-Wing Cousin,” or “The Day I Zipped My Lip”–you chose in your group. Write a blog post about the problem described in your reading and any solutions that are offered.
One of the first problems described in Digging in the Trash by David Joy was poverty. He talked about the people living in the trailer parks and how little they had. That people wouldn’t see them as actual people and that they were just trash that had less than everyone else. They could barely even survive with $20 because that wasn’t enough to pay bills or anything. He mentioned that we recognize class as a person worth but that was never how he saw it growing up. People could have nothing but they were still people who deserved the same treatment as everyone else in the world. There weren’t any solutions that were flat out mentioned but a way to help is to stop looking at people who have less as not people at all. They are just as equal as anyone else. They may not be able to afford the same but they are still fighting the same fight as we all are.
Another problem mentioned was addiction. People become addicted because they don’t have a lot but they have what they can. If it’s drugs or alcohol its what they. It’s a second for them to forget the cards they have been dealt and pretend even for a second that they are in a better life. It’s how Joy describes it as “just a second to breathe”. People tend to stay away from things they don’t understand and unless you have been addicted to something you really don’t get what it’s like. So then we think that something is wrong with them and they are just very damage. Which they might be but we still need to give them the same respect as everyone else. This goes back to everyone is a person and we all have the same rights and deserve respect just like anyone would no matter where you come from.
The last problem that to me was the biggest is the fact that people don’t listen anymore. We talk to people but never truly understand what they are saying. We just wait for them to finish so we can reply back and never just sit there taking it in. Our lives today are so fast moving and we are so distracted by everything around us that we miss the people just crying out for someone to listen. Not someone to talk to or as Joy said give advice but just to sit there and listen to everything. If we just were able to really be present with people we could help teen suicide rates go down because that’s what they need. Sometimes they are just so fed up with not being heard. They may have asked for help but was never taken seriously so they only way they feel heard is by doing something so big people have no choice but to see and by then it’s too late. This is a problem that needs to have the biggest and fastest solution. If people stop taking conversation as okay when are they done so i can say something and just take a moment to really listen it could change the outcome on some peoples lives.
The Us and Them problem in “Strangers on a Plane” is that she felt as though she couldn’t talk or relate to the person that was sitting next to her on the plane because she looked different and looked like she lived a totally different life. We base people off of their appearences and we think that people are so different than us. The us and them problem for your reading was that we see people with different ones situations and categorize and judge them based off on what we see. Having more or something does not correlate to who that person is. Us and Them in general is when we look at different groups of people that are different than yourself and we judge them or discriminate against them just because we can see minor differences.