How to Hit Rock Bottom
Delta Winds: A Magazine of Student Essays
A Publication of San Joaquin Delta College
2016
How to Hit Rock Bottom
Adán Álvarez
We must start at a very crucial point in the lives of people and that is their childhood. The children born into a family of poverty are already predisposed to enter a cycle of sadness and failure, for the society's economy will make it tough on the poor working class to earn money. Besides having a hard time supplying their family with any source of food, parents will only be able to dress their kids with hand-me-downs and cheap generic clothing. The children will be ridiculed at school for their appearance. They will be tormented constantly every day at recess, and they will arrive home with tears in their eyes and hatred in their hearts. At home, the children will be constantly yelled at. They will be verbally and physically abused by their parents. Parents will target the kids since the kids cannot fight back, and the stresses of life will be too much for these families. The children will not be fed properly, they will not be clothed nicely, and they will not be loved correctly.
The children will then grow up to be cold and reckless teenagers who will make many bad decisions. The children will begin to commit crimes because of the situations they were born into. The children will begin to steal, cause violence, and consume illegal drugs. This will seem fine to the teens, for their teen culture will view it as cool. The teens will grow older, and in time they will be labeled as adults. With the constant breaking of laws, these young adults will sooner or later see their parents from a different point of view, and that will be from behind metal bars.
Jails will be filled with older adults who share the same history as the new adults. The inmates will all be dressed the same and will be stripped of all rights. The new inmates will fend for their lives as they try to survive the ruthless ways of the prison system. The inmates will be primitive animals who seek to have the power to control others, and this will lead them to kill, mutilate, and rape other inmates. The guards hired by these facilities will not help protect inmates. The constant fear of whether these inmates will be able to see another day will drive them to paranoia and cold heartedness. This system of corrections that will be implemented in the society will be a perfect fit.
If some survive and come out of these facilities, would that mean they will have a fresh new start? This cannot happen in the society we are creating, so we shall make it very tough for ex-convicts to start a new life.
The first thing a person must do to survive in our economy is to have a sustainable income. During job interviews, when former-inmates have to admit they have had trouble with the law, they will be seen as a last resort because employers will be seeking industrious and reliable people. However, some former-inmates might be lucky and get jobs they applied for, so there will be a plan for this circumstance. These employees will receive income at a set wage, and employers will find it hard to give them raises. As the government raises prices, most of these employees will be earning the bare minimum to support themselves. These were the same circumstances that the society put the former inmate's parents through.
The new employees will reach a point that will cause them to feel like they are going nowhere. With several months of work and no raises, they will grow tired and lethargic, causing them to be fired. Once these fired employees leave the job, they will file for welfare checks in order to have some sort of income. These unemployed former-inmates will feel a little sense of help. However, they will find that the assistance will not provide them the same support that they had when working. Since the unemployed will have previous convictions and bad work records, they will soon be out of options and welfare supplements.
At this point our initial goals will be complete. The unemployed former-inmates will soon be wandering the streets with no home, no food, and no family. The outcasts will walk the streets, deteriorating from drug usage, insanity, and starvation. The homeless will ask people for help, but many will ignore them because they will not wish to associate with the less fortunate. We will make it illegal to feed these people in order to improve the tourism in many cities. These cities can then brag that they are now free of pesky beggars. The wanderers will also be treated with excessive force by our nation's law officials.
Now, we have reached success! If you have followed these steps, you shall have created a world of homelessness, poverty, and deprivation. Surely, this could not exist in a nation of democracy and leading technology. There is no nation that would ever commit these heinous crimes against humanity in reality.