This is my second article on my experiences as a self employed person on a low income on the government’s abysmal Universal Credit (UC) ‘social security’ programme. When writing my first article, it was even a surprise to me just how many examples of incompetence I had experienced in only around 7 months as a claimant. Perhaps, then, I shouldn’t be surprised that in the following 6 months I’ve experienced so much more incompetence that it justifies writing a second article. The main issues I have faced are due to the process of transferring from the ‘Live Service’ which I was on in Sheffield, to the new and improved ‘Full Service’ here in Oldham. Additionally, as I’ve been self employed for over a year, I have been introduced to a new kind of sanction called the ‘Minimum Income Floor’ (MIF). Transferring from the ‘Live Service’ to the ‘Full Service’ A few days before moving house in September, I had a mandatory work coach meeting at the Job Centre. I used it to explain that ...
(Article originally written in 2015)
Many people would argue that we don't need radical social change, or that we should even 'conserve' things the way that they are - “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”.
This
attitude leads us to forget the many obvious symptoms visible every day
of what a pathologically unhealthy society we live in.
Would a truly healthy, ‘developed’ society have any of the following problems?
1. Poverty
According to the Trussel Trust, 900,000 people have sought the aid of their foodbanks in the past 12 months. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1 in 10 people will be homeless during their lives. We are in the 6th largest economy in the world, a 'developed nation’, yet people cannot afford food or shelter. Saying the UK is a developed nation suggests that we have reached an end point - we were 'developing’, and now we have reached the goal of 'developed’! In reality we have been convinced that there must always be poverty; that no matter what we do, there will always be homeless people, always people going without food; but this is a lie, disseminated by those in power to maintain their position.
Poverty shouldn’t exist in a healthy society. The reason that society developed is to ensure that people wouldn’t be poor or hungry, from its origins in early human civilisation. Humanity became separate from the animals through our ability to work together, sharing burdens so that all our needs were met.
2. Unrest
There are entire genres of music that are largely dedicated to a desire to change the world we inhabit: from reggae to punk, early rap and hip-hop, blues and soul. A healthy society wouldn’t have millions of people listening to music that points out all it’s flaws. Whether it’s Bob Marley telling us to stand up for our rights and love one another, Edwin Starr asking “War, what is it good for?”, Public Enemy telling us to fight the power, The Sex Pistols calling for anarchy in the UK. This music was all created and loved by people who felt a resonance with it’s message, that things are not OK as they are.
45% of Scottish people voted in the independence referendum to remove themselves from this system. The vote that has had the highest turnout in the UK since the 1950s was one brought about by deep discontent at how things are.
People strike and protest year in, year out, out of a desire for change. The very existence of large numbers of people unhappy with society is proof enough that the current system is unsatisfactory.
Why would thousands of people across the country feel the need to go out en masse and destroy everything they see almost indiscriminately? It is illogical to think that rioting 'just happens’ no matter how good things are, and it is no wonder that the media attempts to blame such events on individual greed or sudden mob insanity. The 2011 riots were initially sparked by the killing by police of Mark Duggan; yet this reasoning, though accepted as the initial cause of the riots, was not on the whole used to explain the continued rioting across the country. This year in Ferguson a very similar event occurred, with people rioting in anger at the unfair treatment of black people by the police. In reality a riot is an unbridled and often poorly directed expression of the anger that vast numbers of people feel at society; and in a healthy society, this urge to cause chaos and destruction surely wouldn’t exist.
3. Depression
The question commonly asked when someone, particularly a loved and outwardly cheerful person such as Robin Williams, commits suicide is “Why?”, “It just doesn’t make sense”, “They seemed to have everything”.
To wonder on the reason behind suicide and depression like this is to assume that misery is always inside an individual’s brain, something that we could never see or understand.
I don’t presume to know the reasons why any single person chooses to kill themselves, but an increasing suicide rate is an indicator of something far more crushing than any individual’s sadness. It indicates a society that is failing to make a huge number of people happy, a society, in fact, that could actively be causing depression. Individualism, competition, oppression; none of the features that increasingly characterise our world could be said to be in the pursuit of happiness for its citizens.
The solution proposed to the problems of depression and stress are individual: take a pill so you can cope with the way the world is; take part in therapy that teaches us how to be happy with how things are. How about a different solution? Don’t try to change people to fit the world, while continuing to make the world a more hostile place for everyone but the privileged; instead, try to change the world into one where we can all be happier naturally. A healthy society wouldn’t need to medicate or therapise its citizens en masse.
4. Addiction
Billions of people in the world are addicted to substances and activities, some more harmful, physically or mentally, than others.
Addiction occurs when consuming a substance that alters your perception reality is seen as preferable to dealing with that reality. It would appear, therefore, that we have created a society in which the billions of addicts in the world, whether it’s to coffee, heroin, alcohol, facebook or anything else, find reality difficult to deal with alone. Society is formed in such a way that people are in a position where taking heroin, universally known to be deadly and highly addictive, is still perceived to be a better option than the real world.
A healthy society wouldn’t have a large proportion of the population reliant on mind altering substances or addictive behaviours to get from one day to the next.
These are a few of the dozens of symptoms of a society that isn’t working as it should and could, more include obesity, economic recession, crime and more. We are like someone refusing to go the doctor despite obvious indicators of a horrible disease. We see these things and are convinced that “Some people are poor and that’s how it is”, “Sometimes riots just happen” or “People will always get depressed”. If we can just realise that none of these assumptions are true, things could change easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2W3aG8uizA
Would a truly healthy, ‘developed’ society have any of the following problems?
1. Poverty
According to the Trussel Trust, 900,000 people have sought the aid of their foodbanks in the past 12 months. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1 in 10 people will be homeless during their lives. We are in the 6th largest economy in the world, a 'developed nation’, yet people cannot afford food or shelter. Saying the UK is a developed nation suggests that we have reached an end point - we were 'developing’, and now we have reached the goal of 'developed’! In reality we have been convinced that there must always be poverty; that no matter what we do, there will always be homeless people, always people going without food; but this is a lie, disseminated by those in power to maintain their position.
Poverty shouldn’t exist in a healthy society. The reason that society developed is to ensure that people wouldn’t be poor or hungry, from its origins in early human civilisation. Humanity became separate from the animals through our ability to work together, sharing burdens so that all our needs were met.
2. Unrest
There are entire genres of music that are largely dedicated to a desire to change the world we inhabit: from reggae to punk, early rap and hip-hop, blues and soul. A healthy society wouldn’t have millions of people listening to music that points out all it’s flaws. Whether it’s Bob Marley telling us to stand up for our rights and love one another, Edwin Starr asking “War, what is it good for?”, Public Enemy telling us to fight the power, The Sex Pistols calling for anarchy in the UK. This music was all created and loved by people who felt a resonance with it’s message, that things are not OK as they are.
45% of Scottish people voted in the independence referendum to remove themselves from this system. The vote that has had the highest turnout in the UK since the 1950s was one brought about by deep discontent at how things are.
People strike and protest year in, year out, out of a desire for change. The very existence of large numbers of people unhappy with society is proof enough that the current system is unsatisfactory.
Why would thousands of people across the country feel the need to go out en masse and destroy everything they see almost indiscriminately? It is illogical to think that rioting 'just happens’ no matter how good things are, and it is no wonder that the media attempts to blame such events on individual greed or sudden mob insanity. The 2011 riots were initially sparked by the killing by police of Mark Duggan; yet this reasoning, though accepted as the initial cause of the riots, was not on the whole used to explain the continued rioting across the country. This year in Ferguson a very similar event occurred, with people rioting in anger at the unfair treatment of black people by the police. In reality a riot is an unbridled and often poorly directed expression of the anger that vast numbers of people feel at society; and in a healthy society, this urge to cause chaos and destruction surely wouldn’t exist.
3. Depression
The question commonly asked when someone, particularly a loved and outwardly cheerful person such as Robin Williams, commits suicide is “Why?”, “It just doesn’t make sense”, “They seemed to have everything”.
To wonder on the reason behind suicide and depression like this is to assume that misery is always inside an individual’s brain, something that we could never see or understand.
I don’t presume to know the reasons why any single person chooses to kill themselves, but an increasing suicide rate is an indicator of something far more crushing than any individual’s sadness. It indicates a society that is failing to make a huge number of people happy, a society, in fact, that could actively be causing depression. Individualism, competition, oppression; none of the features that increasingly characterise our world could be said to be in the pursuit of happiness for its citizens.
The solution proposed to the problems of depression and stress are individual: take a pill so you can cope with the way the world is; take part in therapy that teaches us how to be happy with how things are. How about a different solution? Don’t try to change people to fit the world, while continuing to make the world a more hostile place for everyone but the privileged; instead, try to change the world into one where we can all be happier naturally. A healthy society wouldn’t need to medicate or therapise its citizens en masse.
4. Addiction
Billions of people in the world are addicted to substances and activities, some more harmful, physically or mentally, than others.
Addiction occurs when consuming a substance that alters your perception reality is seen as preferable to dealing with that reality. It would appear, therefore, that we have created a society in which the billions of addicts in the world, whether it’s to coffee, heroin, alcohol, facebook or anything else, find reality difficult to deal with alone. Society is formed in such a way that people are in a position where taking heroin, universally known to be deadly and highly addictive, is still perceived to be a better option than the real world.
A healthy society wouldn’t have a large proportion of the population reliant on mind altering substances or addictive behaviours to get from one day to the next.
These are a few of the dozens of symptoms of a society that isn’t working as it should and could, more include obesity, economic recession, crime and more. We are like someone refusing to go the doctor despite obvious indicators of a horrible disease. We see these things and are convinced that “Some people are poor and that’s how it is”, “Sometimes riots just happen” or “People will always get depressed”. If we can just realise that none of these assumptions are true, things could change easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2W3aG8uizA
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