While the media continuously portrays older people as being the helpless victims of neglect, it turns out that they are using platforms like ours to have their say and improve services.

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Often swimming in dirty black water to rescue the old and the sick, people were forced to climb skyscrapers in the crippling heat and carry the helpless down numerous flights of steps.

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But Professor Morduch says the figure is so low, it has encouraged the idea that people in this minimal income bracket must lead passive, helpless lives, when this is not the case.

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Shocked, fearful and helpless, he fled the fiery scene where six people died and scores were injured.

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The welfare state's expansion into every nook and cranny of too many people's lives has been less about saving people from deprivation and expresses more a condescending middle-class view of people as helpless and hapless unless the state helps them to parent correctly, improve their lifestyles, cut down on smoking or drinking, etc.

BBC: UK

Instead of trying to change the world, we just need to take the stigma off mental health issues and recognize that people who suffer from these issues are not helpless victims of a misguided society.

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But in as much as the American left is now a coalition of groups that define themselves as the victims of social and economic forces, and in as much as its leaders encourage people to feel helpless and aggrieved, he thinks they make America a glummer place.

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