Today's Society is Suicide

photo from Jac Jac's World

During the three days I spent in bed due to fever, a horrible headache and tonsilitis, I was more worried about not being able to do my group blog assignment for university, screwing a presentation next Tuesday and not getting done with an essay a week before the deadline than thinking about my health. I couldn't help but wonder: Why are we always busy thinking about success, when, at the end of the day, staying alive is the real success.

I only went to the doctor to get a paper for uni that says that I am ill. I'm glad I went as the doctor said I need antibiotics. Tonsilitis without a treatment with antibiotics can be dangerous for the heart. And I only thought about the stupid paper for uni.

I told my friend Lea I could not come in to uni because of tonsilitis. She laughed at me saying, I clearly could come to uni with tonsilitis as her brother went to school for his GCSE exam with bronchitus. But, what's a GCSE worth when you are dead?

So many people go to work ill...or half dead. They work for twelve hours, get bullied and feel worse the next morning. Then they take a pill and go to work again. Seriously, we HAVE to treat our bodies better.

I might sound like a hypocrit to some people. Here in England people call me the "beer lady" as I loved to drink two or three beers every day. I smoked for seven years and my eating behaviour was not that of a role model either. Did you notice the tense?

I had to go through a lot to learn how horrible I am treating my body. At the beginning of this year, I had circulation problems on a daily basis, a mysterious stomach pain that no one could explain and on top of that I could not leave the house on my own anymore. I was just a mess. I went to doctors nearly every day, but all they did was doing tests. Just when I started considering to take a year off from university, I had an encounter with a man who is into chinese medicine.

This chinese non-medical practitioner was able to cure me from my stomach pain and my circulation problems. I stopped drinking (at least on a daily basis) and I quit smoking. I changed my whole eating behaviour, which is not easy here in England where the food is just bad and people do not even know what spelt is. (I have to get all my health food and my tea from Germany, which is just ridiculous).

Moreover, most of my problems are the result of my ongoing worries about being perfect. I always want to be the best, want to get the highest marks and feel depressed when I make mistakes. I did not realized how much I damage my body with that.

Friends of mine sometimes do not eat for one day. They smoke, they drink, they take all kinds of drugs. They go out partying even though they are ill. They work all night, all weekends, because they want to earn as much money as possible and get the highest marks. One of my friends died three years ago, because he did not bother to take his antibiotics properly. He did not take his illness seriously and that was his worst mistake in his life.

Unfortunately, society is like that. It is hard to relax and just listen to your body. You will be left behind by competitive society. Your rivals never rest.

When I was lying in bed on Thursday morning with fever, I thought I had made a mistake not going to university and pitching my idea for the group blog. Now I am convinced that I made the right decision. The body we have is something precious. It is the shell of our mind and we'd better not mess up with it as life can be over just like that.

Bad eggs

photo by Welt

A German egg producer sold millions of his eggs coming from caging chicken as free range chicken eggs, the animal conservationist PETA revealed last Wednesday.

Edmund Haferbeck from PETA said that the producer in Brandenburg, a region in east Germany, sold at least 300 million eggs a year with a fake labelling to several super market chains all over Germany.

The animals were not kept in ways appropriate to their species. Nevertheless, the eggs were sold as free range chicken eggs. PETA assumes that the producer made a higher profit of seven million Pounds (ten million Euro) because of the higher price of free range chicken eggs.

How awful is that? I always buy the better eggs. Better eggs? I know the free range chicken eggs are smaller and just don’t look that nice but I know that it comes from a happy chicken.

I don’t understand how you can earn your living from keeping thousands of hens in cages that are obviously far too small. Do the people working in such a place actually think about what they are doing? Everyone thinks with horror of the Holocaust. Why is it then ok to keep animals like that? In my point of view it is a crime as well.

I know I am not the only one thinking like that. Some people, who do not have much money, relinquish their chocolate or cigarettes to be able to buy eggs from happy chickens rather than products of animal cruelty. Now it is shocking to find out that these people, probably including me, were actually eating those eggs. You can’t say: It is the thought that counts.

With every egg you bought, you supported animal cruelty. And people were not even aware of it. This producer has hurt the dignity of many Germans and I hope he will be punished accordingly.

Anarchy in school

photo taken from indymedia

Thousands of German school students skipped their lessons and went on the streets of the country's big cities to protest against the school system, BBC revealed this Wednesday. In Berlin 5000 students were striking, in Hamburg even 6000 this Wednesday alone. Pupils from the age of 10 onwards voiced their anger with overcrowded classrooms, the lack of teachers and huge exam pressures in Germany.

Well, they have a point there. In Germany's Eastern part you have an unemployment rate of up to 20 per cent. Even people with an Abitur (similar to A-level) have difficulties to find a job or even to get into university. Moreover, students are even attending lectures at university for years and years, but when they finish - they just cannot find a job. This is really depressing.
People who do not even get into the Gymnasium (grammar school) have little or no chance to make a living. If you miss the chance to get good marks in the first years of your school career, you will be stuck in lower educational schools, called Gesamtschule or in the worst case, the Hauptschule, a school, where teachers are scared of their students and struggle to teach them anything at all.

Once stuck in such a school, it is very hard to catch up. Because of the three different education systems you cannot swap to different schools easily, even if you turn out be more intelligent than you proved to be in the first couple of years while attending school.

Therefore it is understandable that students make a big fuss and go on strike.
What is out of proportion is that they run into universities and devastate and smash up everything that is on their way.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported on students rioting in Berlin's Humboldt-University. They burnt toilet paper, torn fire extinguishers from walls and even destroyed a Holocaust exhibitionin in the university's foyer.

Now, that's a thing you just can't do. Voicing your anger in public is all right when necessary. But anarchy is not the answer. Even the Nazis discovered that you don't get any respect by beating up people and smashing things.

When I heard about people striking against the current education system, I thought: Yay, finally someone is actually doing something against it. But with violent action the whole story just loses its serious angle. Concerned students became bad revolutionists who vandalise in public institutions. Guys, seriously, your message won't be heard through vandalism. Calm down and most of all, grow up.