Posted by
A Modest Proposal on Friday, November 24, 2006 11:54:42 PM
I stumbled across my old high school literature book and started reading everything I never read. Being in high school the expectations are pretty low for the intellectual property one must attain. After scrolling through the pages I came to the bold title of "Satire". Satire meaning a piece of writing designed to make its readers feel critical- of themselves, of humanity. This seemed an appropriate place to stop in read living in a world of "pessimism" as our president would put it. "A Modest Proposal", a striking text by Jonathan Swift offering an outrageous solution to these problems of human misery.
Pretty much in 1729 he blamed all Irish settlers problems on the English. Woman with multiple children begging for food and dying in the streets. While this is sad, there is never one significant problem facing them. There's always a movie like theme tied together with collaborating mistakes, that contributes to one's financial hardships. This made me think about present day and the situations facing us today in poverty. Poverty is equivalent to racism; no matter how many government institutions and programs you elevate on your platform, poverty will exist. In Swift's text he offers a solution. "Death". I always tell my fellow classmates who fail tests that "suicide is always an option." Death is the sum of life and at any time it could be used as answer. Presidents and Congress sign off on war sending sworn in soldiers to "fight till the death" for the honour of their respective countries. Misery struck patients lobby for family members to pull the plug.
When speaking about the sympathetic subject of HIV/AIDS one must think of death because unfortunately this is the outcome. One must also ask themselves how those persons got there. The black plague in the middle ages was fueled by hysterical citizens. AIDS was once influenced by concerned citizens, but has largely died down by the "awareness" and homosexual rights craze. Mr. Jonathan Swift got me thinking, what's so wrong with hitting the reset button? My opinion is biased because I know heaven waits for me, but couldn't we reinvent a Mother Teresa figure, converting the sick and downtrodden to christianity, sending them on to the pearly gates?