HIV/AIDs as a reflection of our society

just watched a movie called A closer walk which I encourage everyone to watch; one of the many very good points is that HIV/AIDs and our failure to stop it spreading reflects about our society in general. Of course every society is different between regions, countries, cities etc; but there are some interesting thoughts that came into my mind.

First I started thinking about social stigmas -related to sex, related to old or disabled people, related to people of other races and sexes. And the obvious truth that we start with a negative stigma of almost anything different or anything we do not understand, but once we come into close contact with it and reach across the divide to make a personal connection, then we can lose the stigma. But the problem is if we think this way then we start with holding stigmas towards so many people and have to work to overcome them -rather than the opposite. I understand the evolutionary perspective of having to earn trust and fear people or things that are different or we do not understand for own survival; but today we come into contqact with so many people and things that are different: much more than in the past; and we effect so many more people that are so different to us, without even knowing it!

How can we change these stigmas? Are we as humans, humane people? It seems not. Despite knowledge and awareness we often do nothing, for so many reasons -some simple and some complex. The more reasons there are, the more solutions there are -which makes it harder to solve on one hand, but also offers more opportunities for us to do something -just pick one small solution that fits our personal situation. Despite evident visibility on our own streets of people less fortunate, we as humans don't seem to do anything about it. It's not often about desire, or about means, or ability (though all often are missing); but more generally about behaviour.

What does it take for society to change? To take responsibility for itself? I mean, our society is killing itself in so many ways... Yes, there are 'bigger picture' ideas: of there being more people creating more diseases killing more people, of poverty being inevitable no matter what and so on.. but what strikes me, is that we COULD actually do something about it.. it is not just out of our hands!

Now for a problem I do not have an answer for- if in some countries 40% people have HIV/AIDs and whole families and friendship networks are dying from it; why is HIV/AIDs becoming a bigger problem? Surely everyone is affected by it; surely they can see it, see the effects and will want to stop it -for their own, selfish sake -but this is not happening. If there are cultural reasons for this (man involving the role of women in society) then how come the culture does not change? Yes, we need to understand different cultures, respect them etc. But there is no point in preserving a culture if it is not fit for the modern society.. if by preserving a culture it wipes its own people out. They need to change their culture to survive (and not necessarily change to a certain or specific culture; but make some kind of change)!

Finally a point was made by the Director of the movie, that there are somethings that are fundamental rights and others that are a privilege: The rich may have more priviledges than the poor, but we should not have more rights.