Real heroes: the ones that need to be appreciated

“Real heroes don’t wear capes”. I have heard this being said time and time again to symbolize the flourishing support of the justice system, the small businesses in the economy, and in general, a little pat on the backs to  ‘the little guys’ as a whole. But to be honest, do we really understand the meaning of such a phrase? The amount of work that these people do and the little amount of appraisal they get – in both monetary and mental terms – in comparison to the level of effort they give is astonishing. In recent times, for example, police in the US have been ridiculed with a mob-like mentality, their faintest mistakes have been nitpicked and media have reported incidents in a deceptive manner. A couple of days ago, a cop was questioned to have killed two girls due to a police chase gone wrong. What the media didn't report was that - surprisingly - is that the girls had hijacked a car and due to them driving under the influence, they skimmed into a pond where they had drowned. The police officer had followed the rules to the book, but since the media had not read the police reports carefully, they were asking ridiculous questions to the deputy who had been involved.

These people work to protect us, some officers working ridiculous hours and get paid a below average salary. This, however, is an issue that is being constantly talked about, but my opinion is that the economy is organized in such a way that we have given more to the ‘value added’ to tertiary services such as giants like Microsoft, Google, who make billions, but we cannot bear to give a few extra cents to FairTrade suppliers so that farmers can have a subsistence living standard to raise their families in a relatively better environment.  Granted, that the entrepreneurship skills of the owners of these companies is letting me use Microsoft Word to type this, and Google-owned ‘Blogger’ to be able to share my ideas. But that is not the point I’m trying to make. The reason why I am bringing this to light is not to degrade the importance of modern technology and other tertiary services in our lives, but to illustrate the state of the world and that we cannot let it to continue in this way. A thousand years ago, these companies would not matter, but as in Economics we get to know that to survive there are three basic necessities: food, water and shelter. And in that time and age, people who could cultivate food, knit clothes and make homes were the real heroes: people of action who actually cement the foundation for the pillars of life. This may sound overly-dramatic but it is the truth. As the human race has learnt, grown and evolved we have taken advantages of even the most basic things that would leave our ancestors amazed, like the wheel and fire that we take for granted and have learnt how to ‘thrive’ and not just ‘survive’.

My conclusion is that we have to look at the declining importance we give to people who give us our food, people who risk their lives to defend the nation so that we can sleep peacefully at night, and the people who work tirelessly day in and day out in a questionable work environment to make clothes you have on your back. The economic system fails to address the needs of the people who are actually the people who have skills that are necessary to ‘survive’ It is true that being human will lead us to creating technology as ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, but we have to also take a step back to look after the ‘little people’ who do these things for us and have to accept the fact that they are being under-appreciated. I’m not asking for a standing ovation - that doesn't give these people a better life - but it is necessary for us, as human beings, to look after our own and that’s why we should. Because at the end of the day what are we if are not human?

That's it from me, I just wanted to share my thoughts about this as I have been thinking about this for the past couple of days. I probably won't post regularly in May because of my final exams. But if you like what you see, please follow  the blog or on social media!

-Saquib

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