If it weren’t for Beatlemania, I may not have heard of Liverpool, but the city played a crucial global role before John Lennon was born. Liverpool’s name is derived from the muddy canal now known as the River Mersey, which was formed thousands of years ago during the thaw of an ice age.
Previously, the
United Kingdom, Ireland, and the European continent were all connected. Britain was an uninhabitable frozen tundra,
until temperatures rose, causing sea levels to rise. As a result, the UK was cut off from the continent and the Irish Sea was born. Liverpool became
a coastal town all due to global warming.
Since Planet Earth kicked up the thermostat, this phenomenon eventually altered the lives of Liverpudlians. The Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, and eventually the Romans settled here. Early visitors tended to influence the make-up and culture of future generations. Because those ancient travelers reached Britannia, England was eventually formed. As the nation developed so did modern English, imperialism, technology, and racism. Because there was England, America was born out of struggle.
For all these reasons——because
of the Vikings and the Romans and the dissidents of King George III——I am able
to write this entry in English. As an
American in the Mother Country, I am always reminded that Great Britain gave
birth to the nation I call home. But the
U.S. was just one pup in a large litter.
At the height of its
prowess, Great Britain’s empire extended across the world. The British sailed to Canada, America, West
and South Africa, Palestine, India, Burma, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and they
even managed to snag Guyana in South America before Spain or Portugal laid
claim. If the super-continent Pangaea broke apart in an alternate design and Britain were landlocked, its
fate may have been considerably different.
The French may have won a few more battles, and then half the world may
have been greeting each other with bonjour. A country and its peoples are born from shifting rock, rising sea levels, and dead vagabonds who long ago decided to camp permanently in a certain spot.
A large portion of Britain’s success resulted from the Liverpool docks. There, the country exported products like salt, and unfortunately the docks were also used for sending African slaves to the Americas. There was an efficient triangular shipping route. Britain exported manufactured goods to Africa, picked up captives, sailed to America, sold the captives, and came home with cotton, sugar, and tobacco, products that were grown abundantly and cheaply because of slave labor. Liverpool’s docks created worldwide ripples.
The ships brought
tea from China and altered the drinking habits of a nation. The ships also provided jobs to an
overcrowded metropolis. An extremely
populated town frequented by foreigners, Liverpool was vulnerable to diseases,
which could spread quickly through the unsanitary tenements.
Many European cities
seemed to suffer similar miseries.
Without proper sewage systems, the impoverished portion of society lived
on top of each other and amidst unwanted odors.
This happened in Edinburgh, Dublin, and Liverpool just to name a
few. Residents lived in squalor and
worked in dangerous environments, if there were jobs to be found at all.
During the
Industrial Age and beyond, manual laborers would line up like cattle on
Liverpool’s docks, where they hoped to be chosen for a day’s work. If they were picked, workers would haul goods
on or off the ship. It was grueling work
that was hard on the back, and slippery conditions made heavy-lifting a hazardous
exercise. But it was better than an
empty stomach. Despite the occasional
gig, many were left unemployed, a trend that still exists today. Liverpool’s unemployed and homeless
populations are roughly double the national average.
On nearly every busy
street, there is a homeless person, most of whom are young and white. In the U.S., most of the homeless I’ve seen
in Pennsylvania are older ruffians with bushy, grey beards, a semi-reliable
indication of middle-age status. In
Liverpool One, the city’s shopping district, the sidewalks are filled with
beggars displaying their cardboard signs and holding up coffee cups for
donations.
On my way to the
museums by the water’s edge, a man approached me and asked if I could spare a
pound or two. I lied and told him I had
no money, even though I had just withdrawn a few crisp notes from a nearby ATM.
“I haven’t eaten
breakfast in two days,” he pleaded. I
merely apologized and walked away while silently justifying my behavior and
struggling to battle my guilt.
While it was true I could spare a few pounds, I was on a budget. First and foremost, I have to look out for my own survival, but I sympathized with his hunger and felt remorseful for being so stingy. But, I reasoned, if I were to be truly charitable, I would have to give money to every homeless person on the street, and pretty soon that pocket change would add up. Can you honestly deem yourself charitable if you help one man eat while you let another man starve?
I suppose it is
noble to help whomever you can and make peace with the fact that you can’t save
everyone, but I vowed to be equally and consistently ungenerous. Let nature run its
course, I reasoned. I should not
interfere with natural selection of these harsh environs, so I vowed not to
tamper with this urban Darwinism. If a
homeless person should dig himself out of his hole, then he should be the one
working the shovel. Although this
rationale made sense to me, I couldn’t help but to feel guilty for not parting
with the coins jingling in my pocket.
I understand that
some people may be down on their luck, and they have nowhere to turn. I cannot begin to imagine how these so-called
vagrants are treated as though they are less than human. I admit that I avoid the gaze of a homeless
person so that I can avoid confronting my immorality. I tell myself I should be a decent
human-being and help a fellow member of my species. Surely this is the right thing to do.
My American
upbringing has taught me to view dependence as shameful. I’ve been raised to think that a jobless
person is a lazy bum. If I can get an
education and a job that allows me to cover rent, utilities and basic needs,
what is preventing everyone else from doing the same?
You cannot blame
your childhood. Healthy individuals
should possess the mental ability to overcome one’s shortcomings. Not all of us have been dealt a full hand,
but there are strategies and adaptations we can make to compensate for a
delayed start. Only when you victimize
yourself to the negative aspects of your environment do you lose the will to
succeed. Just because you are poor does
not mean there is nothing to look forward to.
Although poverty usually spawns more poverty, it doesn’t have to follow
this pattern. One can use poverty as
motivation to overcome its perils and to escape its throes.
At the Museum of
Liverpool, I listened to the stories of homeless people at an audio
exhibit. Many took to alcohol and drugs
in order to escape their harsh realities.
Should I feel sympathy for someone who gives up and wastes their money
and motivation by drinking or shoot up only to momentarily forget their
bleakness? I’ve never experienced their hardships, so I have no room to judge
one for falling prey to vices. However,
I do understand what it means to give up on yourself when you could’ve tried a
little harder, a little longer. I offer little
to no sympathy to those who quit. If
they give up on themselves, then why should I believe in them?
Resignation is a
sign of weakness, and the environment tests the strength of its people. Inevitably, some fail, some scrape by, while
others thrive. This is the make-up of a
balanced eco-system. The big fish eat
the little fish. But the problem is that
fish don’t have a guilty conscience.
When stripped of our
morals, we are all just big-brained animals competing for resources and struggling
to survive. The land both threatens and
nourishes us, so one cannot blame the environment——this same coastal town that
helped build an empire. The Beatles were
born in a partly demolished Liverpool that suffered damage from World War
II. But they didn’t look at their desolate
surroundings and blame their struggles on the landscape. Instead, they wrote songs about their city
and eventually put Liverpool back on the map, this time as the rock and roll
capital of the world. Like the tide that
rolls in and out of River Mersey, this city has had its ups and downs, and its
people, the Liverpudlians, have both squandered and seized the opportunities
that the land and sea have offered.
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