De Beauvoir Cycle Gang Strikes Again

Rest of the thread aside, got to agree with a number of EEI's points there.

I've traveled reasonably extensively through the lesser visited parts of the world, drawing some very basic points to light, I've found the people from the poorest areas of the poorest countries generally have a huge amount to give, even when there is nothing to give. A lot of people I came across would be what I consider trustworthy and extremely hardworking, e.g. if they can collect enough scraps of cardboard from streets/ shops/ other cardboard venders they might just be able to trade that for a few hundred gram's of rice/ potato/ veg etc. But they won't steal, they will almost always ask where the need arises before they take and are not offended if someone was to refuse them their waste scraps of cardboard. They will work and work and work, and expect nothing in return but megre existance.

Then when you come back to the UK/western world the excesses can be almost unbearable. I remember when I was young we used to take in international veterinary students as lodgers to make up the rent, they came from all over east asia, one was amazed by the sea, she ran into it in 3degreeC air temperature in feb (sea maybe 8C) fully clothed and was the happiest I think I've ever seen a person ever, she'd never seen the sea. Another broke down in tears then broke down further when we took her to the local supermarket (independant in early 90's bought out by tescos) as she had never seen such an array of fresh fruit & veg and so readily available, and cheap (despite many of those products coming from just miles from her own home).

Yet, in the UK we are blighted by people living quite well by our standards, and extraordinarily well by world standards, who see it necessary to rob/pillage and steal from others to fuel their own better than average existence. I find it very hard to comprehend how people (generally people of the estates if we're honest) can behave like they do, but its an impossible task to get the wider message across to them; their more concerned with 'hardness' status in their locale than almost anything else, and I find that scary.

On a different tangent, in the Peruvian rainforest (pre-amazon) I came across villages & towns of shacks that you wouldn't even be able to effectively keep chickens in, with a single UV bulb for light and pretty much nothing else, but a lot of the people that live there are not concerned by having a house with walls that can keep out the various dangerous bugs & insects out and their family in, they are FAR more concerned with status in their locale, Iphone4's (only weeks after they had been launched), genuine Armani & levi jeans, various designer jackets & tops, mega bucks trainer shoes, lexus's, BMW 7seris & merc E classes (all almost new) to parade around their little strip of the jungle in (there is only 6miles of road that those cars can actually drive on, they are shipped/ container ed into the area). These people are generally, not poor, they just choose to spend their earnings/ barely-legitimate gains on items that are purely to 'outdo' their neighbors. Sound familiar?

Can this simplistically be put down the the effect of TVs?

I get more and more depressed on each visit to Nigeria, as folk that don't have much seem to devote their energies to the purchase of total fucking nonsense in the aim of showing outwardly how well they're doing, which, is of ZERO benfit to their lives. They aren't totally poor, they have access (sometimes a group access) to tv with foreign satellite channels pumping out MTV and all that dribble. It's almost like the end of Jim Bowen's Bulls Eye: "Here's what you could have won" - The metaphorical rubbing of your face in the mirror of how shit your life is because of you don't have what we're advertising.

That is what pollutes the mind IMO. The places that I've been to minus TVs but are materialistically really poor seem happier and to co-exisit much better. None of the inflated individualistic egos that get bigger the further West you travel.

Were kids as brand aware in this country in the 70s/80s as they are now? I didn't know anyone robbing/stabbing for a pair of airmax then as now.