I just read through several news articles, and I've realized how blissfully unaware I am, and we as people in first world countries are to how many terrifying things are.

The vast majority of us are so wretchedly ignorant of the world's affairs that it's terrifying. And it's not just that we don't hear about it, but it's mainly that we choose to ignore it, whether it's subconsciously or not. I personally can attest to having knowledge of ISIS, the situation in Ukraine, in Syria, with North Korea, and more. Yet we don't think about it.

We push it to the back of our minds and forget about it until someone mentions it to us, then it comes flooding back. We live in a time full of wonderful advancements for comfortable living, technology, medicine, and more. But that is because we are blessed to be born into the environment that we were. And even within our own environment, the world leaders, the first world countries, the looking glass is flawed and cracked. There are so many people who live from pay cheque to pay cheque, surviving off of social welfare, and who for lack of a better way of life find their ways into the lucrative businesses of the drug trade and such. America itself has over 500 million people. How many of those millions live in poverty?

I'll even take a closer look to my own home. In Canada we have high education and graduation rates. As a whole. But when you start focusing on Native Americans, those numbers plummet. I've lived on reservations, and I've known teenagers who graduated that same year who could not correctly label a map of Canada, finish a two sided assignment on Marxism after watching multiple documentaries on it, or even do high school level math. These problems persist through many of the reservations of Canada.

One of the leading causes of this is not that they're stupid or barbaric. I've met people on the reserves who are incredibly talented, hard working, and intelligent. The main problem is a lack of care. These students can drop out of school with little care, or skip class with no repercussions. And they hurt themselves through this. Alcohol and other drugs become their solution, just as it was for their parents and grandparents, and the cycle continues. I don't mean to say this defines every Native by any means. But it is a sadly common occurance.

How can we call ourselves first world countries when we have people within our own countries living as if they were in underdeveloped countries themselves? Yet we shy away from this. We ignore it and push it out of our minds, because we'd rather not speak about it. Just as we ignore the very real and very scary crises that are occurring in the world as each second goes by. We need to open ourselves more to the problems in this world, both domestic and international. That is what the news is there for, not trivial celebrity gossip to distract us from real world issues and dilemmas, but what's happening in the world and what we need to be aware of.