The Challenge

 Today, in a small lecture hall situated within Kingston university, myself and several other youths graduated from "The Challenge". I feel that it aptly summarizes "The Challenge" that during a period in which we were confined within a room and encouraged to mingle, the background music provided had been found (as it became painfully obvious when we looked at the screen of the computer attached to the speakers) by going onto the music streaming site Spotify and typing "gangster" into the search bar (I promptly went on to find and play "Gangam style" to the general gratitude of the juvenile community within the room, proving that despite my lack of knowledge concerning pop culture and trends, I am still more "down with the kids" than the people at "The Challenge" being paid to be exactly that).
 The Challenge is a patronizing program for the youth, based on the assumption that young people will, if not kept off the streets by camping trips and community service, inevitably go feral and commit racially motivated murders or something. The obvious flaw, which still appears to not have been noted by anyone running the program, being that no one likely to be committing such offenses would ever be caught dead taking part in something like The Challenge (they would, presumably, instead be caught literally dead in a crossfire between two street gangs or some other equally horrible incident of self implementing social Darwinism).
 The entire program, like any well thought out devastating master plan, consists of several phases. The first phase is a week spent in the remote countryside participating in team building activities (such as walking, rock climbing, walking, camping, complaining about all the walking, raft building and walking) whilst living in a repulsive youth hostel that would be awarded black holes if any lodging rating organization were to visit. The second phase consists of a week spent inhabiting a block in the Kingston University campus, which felt like a palace compared to the youth hostel (though a palace infested with scuttling insects that I could have sworn had gone extinct several thousand years ago), while the youths study a particular art (be it media, drama or photography). The third week is devoted to planning several community serving projects (like fund raising or litter picking or euthanasia)and the fourth phase, a few weeks later, allows the juveniles to implement these projects. Then finally, after all this, comes the graduation.
 As the team organizer(the figure of central authority who, annoyingly, had a lazy eye so no one could be quite sure who she was angrily shouting at) stood up to give a final speech, I recalled all the character building activities we had taken part in during the course of The Challenge. Like the time when myself and Sergeant Salt (the very picture perfect image of a white middle class boy, nonetheless proud of his self-proclaimed working class up bringing. Complete with the political views of an ultra conservative, the accent of a private school student, the education of a state school and the vocabulary of an American gang member, he still somehow possesses a certain inane charm.) had a deep meaningful conversation whilst camping, discussing such topics as the meaning of life, humiliating anecdotes and who in our group were attractive. Blissfully unaware, until the next day, that the walls of our tent were very thin, the camp site quiet and our voices loud.
 As I vacantly listened, the team organizer stood at the podium began to recount of how the team had been entertaining as well as occasionally problematic, or rather in terms of the latter, not the entire team but more specifically, myself and Sergeant Salt. Even going on to reflect about the time when we deconstructed our team mentor's bed and the occasion when we created a wall of toilet paper with which to block the door of another group during the night.
 One such event that stood out in my memory was a particular evening when two male French students wondered into the campus area occupied by The Challenge proceeding to, in a hormone and probably drink fueled course of action, attempt to hit on the teenage girls from The Challenge residing in the building. The natural reaction of myself, Sergeant Salt and one Cedric (An aggressive widely built and crude American, that is to say, a stereotypical American) had been to shout abuse, utilizing every piece of French we had ever managed to scrape off our linguistic educations, at the two students. Shouting, then, because we were situated on the ground floor and facing the courtyard, swiftly closing the defensive window for fear of a French invasion into our kitchen. When this failed to drive the intruders off, I took several small tomatoes from the fridge as ammunition and threw them as hard as I could, pathetically displaying in the process why I had never got anywhere in cricket. This then escalated into a vegetable war, with an arms race that meant the projectiles became ever more damaging, transforming from small tomato to large tomato to carrot to potato. By morning the courtyard had looked like a post apocalyptic farm, a state of affairs for which I and my comrades were punished.
 After a few dull minutes, the team organizer stepped down from the stage and another member of the Challenge staff began to hand out certificates and take photographs of the proud youths. Youths who had contributed to the community through their own personally designed projects. Our group had decided to do a film festival for the community in order to bring the people together. Though we managed to purchase eight short films to be watched and a site at which to show them, a sports hall belonging to Ricard's Lodge school,  none of us had thought to advertise it thereby meaning that no one turned up. Since none of us had any particular interest in cinematography, we watched three of the eight short films, for which we had collectively had the council pay eighty pounds, and spent the rest of the time stealing food from surrounding groups and abusing each other with the school's carefully maintained sports equipment.
 Finally it was my turn and as I held the certificate, frowning at the camera whilst I did, a thought hit me, a thought suggesting that though I may have done a lot during The Challenge such as: drinking tea containing tomato puree, rebelliously kicking over a bowl of flower, accidentally summoning the fire service numerous times, jumping through a window, microwaving an egg and so forth, nothing I had done had even remotely been helpful to the community. And this thought pleased , and still pleases, me to no end.

Giving Back

 I am currently taking part (not actually doing much but its the taking part that counts) in a patronizing (in the same sort of condescending and judgmental atmosphere of grandparents attempting to be understanding but nonetheless making their lack of understanding blindly obvious in the process by saying things like "Oh darling, you're a lovely girl, it doesn't matter if you didn't do well at school so long as you can cook" or "You're friend forgot to wipe his shoes when he came in but it's fine, its not his fault he's uncultured, I expect they don't teach their children manners in India") government funded program entitled "The Challenge" which aims to get young people (whom they presume have no morals, intelligence, understanding of the world or social life) to "give back to the community" by doing some sort of community service.
 I will make it clear that I don't have a problem with community service in general and think its great (so long as I'm not actually the one doing it) but what I do have a problem with, what causes me a considerable amount of vexation, is the phrase "giving back" to the community.
 Now, the Community has never done anything for me. If the Community were a parent and I its child, I would have been taken away by social services (or possibly not considering the recent incompetence of the social care system) due to gross negligence long ago. The positive publicity of "the community" seems to be that its an integral part of your life, functioning almost as a family member but as family members go, the community has had much of a presence in my life as an aborted older brother. In summary, I owe very little if not absolutely nothing to the community.
 What's more it seems that people think you somehow owe more to the community if you or your family have more money, which when considered logically makes very little sense. My family is relatively well off (and that's relative to the extremely poor economical situation at present) and I'm relatively fortunate (That's relative to those who were born into Uk families with less money/income and not relative to, say, children in Africa in which case everyone in the Uk would be relatively very fortunate which is a positive way of looking at it in a sense. On that note let us all have a moment of silence for those African children for allowing us the privilege of thinking "Thank god that's not me" every time we see a, no longer shocking, "shocking" image of some dying child which provokes less emotion in us than the death of some rich singer somewhere over dosing themselves on recreational drugs) but there's no reason why that means we owe anymore to the community than anyone else.
 We all reap what we sow and the community directly plays very little part in allowing someone to make money (unless monetary transactions by each individual member of the so called community is seen as the work of the community collectively) so I cannot see how the rich need to "give back" anything to the community. If anything the rich are more likely to have private health clinics that do not rely on the community and attend private schools (as do I) that do not rely on the community, as well as doing the community a favor every now and then by contributing to the local economy.
 I am aware that the above paragraph sounded like the height of snobbery and conservatism so would like to make clear that I do like the welfare system and would support a Robbin hood tax (taxing more from the rich than the poor), however I just object to the incorrect, almost deliberately guilt inducing, phrase "giving back" to the community.
 When I said that to those that ran "the challenge" their first response was "well, have you ever used the NHS?", the answer to which is "yes, yes I have once or twice." However my family pays for that enough in taxes and if the use of the NHS is relative to the amount of community service you should do then there are clearly people who use the NHS more but do nothing to "give back" to the community (those in the NHS permanent or intensive care unit for example... possibly because they're too ill to do anything).
 The second response, in light of my "reap what you sow" remark was that I, as a teenager, had sown nothing of my own and have done nothing to deserve being in the privileged position I find myself in. That is very true, its complete chance that I happened to be born to the family I was born to and I'm very fortunate to have done so considering the statistics. However, what that has to do with the community is something I cannot fathom. Why would my extreme turn of good luck require me to "give back" to the community, what on earth makes me indebted to the community for having very good fortune?
 Do "The community" have powers far beyond my understanding that allow them to control who gets born where? Is that the secret task of the local council, the elected members sitting around a table saying "Yes, I think we'll allow him to be born into a nice middle class family because he seems like a good lad ...though at this point there really is no way of discerning one individual from another since unborn foetuses typically tend not to have much of a personality" In which case I shall change all life dreams I've ever held and strive to become a member of the local council for the sheer power of it all.
 However since I highly doubt that is the case, it seems I owe less to the community than I owe to fate and destiny. And if the very little that I owe to the community (possibly in the form of two public library books which have been left untouched in my bookshelf for the last few months, accumulating dust and library fines faster than a cheetah in a car... that analogy possibly falling down due to the fact cheetah's don't tend to have motoring skills) must be "given back" in the form of weekends spent gardening or litter picking (as I was yesterday. Failing to plant daffodil bulbs in a far from local garden which I had never previously been to and picking up pieces of litter which felt more of a disservice than an aid to the community because their garish plastic vibrancy detracted a little from the bleak dullness of the park. All the while wearing skin tight rubber gloves, the type worn by hospital workers and rapists, which makes any job seem more criminal and perverse. The usage of those gloves could transform "baker" to "dough fondler", "barbar" to "hair mollestor" and "Nursery worker" to "Vanessa George") then what terrible price must I pay for the great debts I owe to destiny and fate. How many daffodils do I have to plant to "give back" to destiny and fate? Is that even the right way of going about it?
 Perhaps I should just start a cult worshipping destiny and fate, sacrificing a goat to their names every weekend followed by ritual dancing, spiritual humming and general mystical prancing about.