You Could Be Them, No Not That Them, The Other Them

I've just accidentally got caught up in a Facebook debate about the refugee crisis. I say "accidentally", I mean the following steps happened:

1. I saw something that annoyed me in someone's status.
2. I waded in with the answer and sat back waiting for them to reply with "You're right".
3. 18 other people got involved with even weirder (to me) statements.
4. I spent 30 minutes trying to individually persuade them otherwise like some keyboard based messiah.
5. I wrote on my blog like a true activist.

Something came up, though, that put a lot of things into perfect clarity for me.

Someone in the debate, who was very pro the UK taking more refugees, said something along the lines of "we should and will do loads to help but as usual it'll be us normal people doing it while the rich sit back and do nothing".

My first thought was... "But, compared to these refugees you are insanely rich. Like, crazy rich."

Then I thought, "but he doesn't feel rich because he's in this country where he's in the middle of it all."

Then I thought, "I don't suppose most rich people feel really rich, because they'll always know people with more than them."

Then I thought, no one feels like what they've got is more than they deserve. Everyone believes that the sum of money they've amassed, or the home comforts they've gathered around them, are the very least of what they should have for the hard work they've put in.

Then I thought, well if the "normals" in this country feel a bit put out about having to give up that hard clawed privilege to people who have far less, that explains to me why we're currently fighting for an NHS and basic welfare.

It seems to me that there are quite a lot of people out there with this opinion:

UK Person: I've worked hard for my money and my house, I have earned this through my hard work. I did it in this country and so I don't see why I should be called upon to help people who have not earned the same stuff in this country.

But, doesn't that strike you as extremely similar to this opinion:

UK Person: I've worked hard for my money and my house, I have earned this through my hard work. I did it in this country and so I don't see why I should be called upon to help people who have not earned the same stuff in this country.

The first opinion is someone unsure about whether or not we should be offering so much help to refugees.
The second opinion is someone unsure whether or not we should have a large welfare state.

The problem is, we're very quick to be able to say that the rich have had help becoming and staying the rich:

- Rich parents,
- Best schools,
- Nepotism,
- Financial security should risks fail,

We scoff that that rich don't seem to understand that they're rich because they had everything handed to them to make it SO much easier to stay rich.

But, what we don't see is that we have all had those advantages if we're talking about the global community. We all had relatively rich parents compared to a lot of the world, we have some of the best schools compared to half the world (curse you perfect Scandinavia!)... we are the totally unaware rich in the world stage.

There's a real issue with us believing this media/society/capitalist trope that how successful you've been is a marker of how hard you have tried. Refugees escaping a war that's been raging for 3 years are not doing so because they can't be arsed to get on Monster and get a job like you did.