by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Discrimination of those that behave differently, that have less than others, that are of a different religion, skin color or ethnic or national origin, those that are a bit on the overweight side, and so on, is nothing new.
Now it has gone so far even that people apparently discriminate against others based on what telephone carrier service they have:
Sprint and AT&T are the premium brands while Verizon is considered average. TMobile, Metro and Walmart pre-paid phone services at the bottom.
But telephone carrier services are not the only measures that are thus employed . Your make of car, your type of home and whether owned or rented and its size, as well as the kind of clothes and the brands you wear, and so on, all are used by people to determine your worth.
We have become a society where not what a person's character is counts but what job he performs, with those doing manual labor, on the bottom of the ladder; what kind of car he or she drives and should they not own and drive a car then they are seen as absolute losers. And let's not even talk about people who live in “poverty”, even if they have chosen to live in a state of voluntary poverty.
People do not even ask as to why people may have decided even to live a life that is not linked to consumerism and the pursuit of money and possessions and status. In the eyes of the world of today any such people are failures and best avoided.
Sometimes we can but wonder what kind of a society and world we have become where the worth of a person is measured by his or her possessions and by what telephone service he or she uses rather that by what person he or she is and what character they have. Somewhere along the line things have gone awry, haven't they?
© 2014
