Going back home

The other day my philosophy teacher showed the class two graphs. One graph had a poverty graph where most of the poverty was down south. The other graph showed the amount of black people all across the United States. The first question to the class was why is this still a problem in today’s society. A lot of answers had to do with the culture of two groups of people. White and Black culture were the main object of the discussion for a few minutes. Then the professor decided to switch up and ask why aren’t people going back to home with all the knowledge they learn from college and help their old situation to make it better. This question seemed to stun a lot of students in the class. A lot of them, like me, knew they weren’t going back home to help even if they had a guaranteed job set up for them when they got out of college. I think for a lot of people would think of going back home as some kind of regression. They would feel as if they were done with this place a long time ago never to return. They don’t want to go back to same place they left. They want to move on and leave that past place exactly where they left it, in the past. The next question was pretty rhetorical but he asked it anyway. “In today’s society do people believe in getting their own and leave the next guy to get theirs.” This was answered by a resounding yes. Why? Maybe it’s because people believe if people can work hard for what they get then the person next to them can too. This generation doesn’t really seem to believe in helping out the next guy or giving the assist. For them it’s more like let me just worry about myself and get my own. This brings into question is this the way to live? Is this a good way to run a society? Is this good for the economy? What do you think? Do you believe everyone should just worry about themselves and no one else? We then decided to bring the conversation back to people going back home. How many people are going to go back home and help their families and further their communities? Would you? Even if you traveled hundreds of miles to get away and learn new things. Not just school things but things about yourself and your own tendencies. This made me think about my own situation where I had traveled more than 200 miles to get a new lease on life. I wanted a new set of experiences to look back on and reflect. As far as going back home I had never even put that as an option. It’s not somewhere I want to go back to and live. I feel like it would be a regression of all the progress I’ve made thus far. To end the conversation, he gives us one saying. At some time, people stopped going back and started worrying about themselves.