What the hell is going on? — rant reply
OK, folks, rant time. Brace yourselves.
Here’s my answer to the question I posed yesterday, which was, What’s going on?
(1) Everyone is way, way, WAY too het up over Trump and Brexit.
Forget ’em. Switch off the news. Have they really directly screwed up your life? Really? Indirectly, maybe, because everyone around you is all het up and screaming about it, and that affects you, because you live next to them. But directly? C’mon.
(2) Everyone is too obsessed with answers. Not obsessed enough with asking the right questions.
Remember I Robot? The film? I’m sorry, my responses and limited. You must ask the right question. And then later, That, detective, is the right question.
We love answers because we all desperately want to believe that we’ve got the world under our thumb, and all our ducks in a row. (We don’t. Never have. Never will.) Having all the answers to small questions is a poor way to run your life. Bigger questions, people.
(3) Way, way, WAY too much emotional reaction to every little stupid tweet by every little (italics mine) politico.
Not enough silent reflective thought, let alone maybe, MAYBE, a calmly delivered rational reaction.
(4) There’s WAY too much disgust and ill-will towards The Elite.
We NEED the Elite, and elitism. Most of us can barely manage ourselves and our own homes and families. Who are we to think we could run a company or a country better than the bunch currently trying to do it? Yes, most of them are making a real botch of it at the moment, but that’s beside the point. The botch would be an awful lot worse if you or I were in power.
We do, of course, need the RIGHT elites. Too many people incapable of being a real elite have managed to worm their way into power. A good elite is someone slow, principled, deliberate, calculated, reflective, thoughtful, a delegator, willing to hire and fire courageously, and a good judge of character. Good elites are NOT action figures. They take very little action, but every action they take is the right one.
(5) We’re in the process of losing, nay, of throwing away the very features that have allowed the Western world (and now a lot of the Eastern world as well) to go from zero to sixty in well less than one percent of human history.
Freedom of speech. Judeo-Christian ideals and wisdom. Science and rational thought. Freedom to start, run and benefit from your own enterprise, without being taxed to death. The Rule of Law, with the sovereign and government UNDER the law. Freedom to practise your own faith and exercise your own conscience without fear of retribution.
It’s all under threat. And from ourselves!
Students tell their professors what to teach them, and get really mad if they chance to hear something they deem offensive or politically incorrect. Why’d you bother going to university if you knew it all already, ya numpties? Academics take great care what research they publish, for fear of losing their position because it contravenes established wisdom. People sue anyone who says something other than what they want to hear.
(6) Most of the world seems angry, really angry. Angry people divide the world into two: Black/white, right/wrong, us/them. It’s never that simple. Angry people are desperate people, and desperate people never make wise decisions.
Just calm down, the lot of you.
Forgive all those horrible THEMs who offend you. Don’t seek to get even or set the world to rights. You will not feel any better, but you WILL have made a lot of other people really mad. Great, now we have twice as many angry people in the world. Nice going.
Forgiveness works far better. It’s never easy, but it works every time.
(7) Quit trying to change the world. Change yourself instead. Mind your own business, in every possible way of interpreting that phrase.
Serve your neighbour, and give him opportunity to serve you. THAT will change the world in a really big way.
(8) A lot of the angst we’re feeling now is the result of past sins and things done long ago that we can’t alter. The boys coming home from the war had had a lifetime of adventure in 6 years, and just wanted to settle down and have kids. Lots of ’em. The Boomers saw fit to demand luxurious retirement benefits for themselves, and run up huge debts, personal and government, that we will have to pay back. (Key word there: WILL. It’s just a question of how and when.) Only problem is, we’re still running up the debts. Technology and social media is fuelling the pace of change, positive and negative.
This is all going to end in tears.
The question is, Will it also end in blood and sweat?
(Read: War and poverty.)
Hopefully not, if we learn from history.
(9) History teaches us that history teaches us nothing.
OK, rant over.
