The collapse of labor market, the collapse of expectations
A 25-year-old girl I know works at a slaughterhouse in Italy. She hoses carcasses down with a powerful jet of water to clear them of industrial waste. She is paid 1,500 euros for rubbing her hands sore and getting inhumanly tired. She is not going to come back to Ukraine in the near future. The girl has neither a higher education nor, apparently, any ambitions.
Another person I know, a student at a prestigious law college, returned past summer from Alaska where he had worked under a well-known program. He earned 9,000 dollars in three months at a fish factory. Hard working conditions, problems with getting an expensive visa, etc., did not stop him and will not stop thousands of young people from seeking handsome pay for non-prestigious work abroad.
And one young family burned their bridges behind them. They emigrated to Canada, breaking off all the links with their relatives. They stubbornly refuse to call themselves Ukrainians.
What is this – a diagnosis of society or an unconditional surrender of human spirit? Did Ivan Bahriany, Yevhen Malaniuk, and a host of other not-so-weak people also emigrate in similar conditions?
I have no moral right to condemn those who try to seek a better destiny, for it is part of a human nature, but do have the right to point an accusing finger at those who have not even tried to do something to change the situation for the better.
I agree with Oleh Mykhailiuta (better known as Fagot, front man of the rock band TNMK) who said at a rally in defense of TVi that people who allege that nothing depends on them trigger aggression in him.
One individual can change nothing, but if he or she goes with the stream, they change society – the latter becomes an inert mass of browbeaten gophers in their holes, which can mumble something under their noses but immediately shut up once you shout at them a little.
After all, there are almost no offers for degree-holding specialists, let alone the “cheap workforce,” in Ukraine. The eternal philosophical “What is the meaning of life?” is hopelessly receding to the background, superseded by the urgent “What is there to live on?”
A sociological survey says that if an individual earns about 5,000 dollars, he or she begins to take a closer look at what surrounds them. They are no longer indifferent.
On the other hand, we can see a deliberately lowered bar for the Ukrainians who are forced, due to their meager wages, to pick up crumbs from the table of oligarchs. This reminds me of Orwell who scorned the swine that hated milk and apples but had to eat them just for the benefit of other animals.
And how alluringly gleams the better foreign house of a neighbor!
And should we pour scorn on them if a salary of 1,500-2,000 hryvnias awaits them (if they are lucky enough)? And will the course of the game change after replacements on the parliamentary chessboard? If others come to steer the boat, will they still remember the passionate promises they made when hypocrisy foamed their always voracious mouths?
Everyone makes a choice in life. But is every choice far-sighted?
