Diatribes 1-3

Diatribe 1

I am only human, I make no claim to greater intellect or insight than the next man. I live my life from day to day, their meaning subsumed into a fog of mediocrity. I am bombarded by the same images and media as everyone else. Why do I feel like I am alone? There must be many others who see the world as I do and dream of peace and life without restraint for all humanity. Logic dictates this but I know none of them. I may pass them in the street every day and never be any the wiser. We hold our tounges and trust that things will get better. ITS NOT TRUE.
Things will never get better as long as we are silent. “All that is required for evil to triumph in the world is for good men to do nothing.” I can’t remember who said that but never has a truer word been spoken. We keep our own counsel and let the world rot at its core. “What can we do?” I hear you ask. I don’t have an answer and anyone who thinks they do is either arrogant, an idiot, or both. There is no answer that all will agree on. Some will say “Ban Religion” and I would say to them that everyone has a right to their beliefs. Some would say “Destroy all weapons.” Would you destroy the rocks you stand on? Would you cut off your hand so that no weapon could be held? “Feed the world” others would cry, and it could be done today but what about tomorrow and the day after that. Would you make the poor dependent on your charity for the rest of their existence? No, there is no easy answer. There are no soundbites that will solve all the worlds problems. Hunger, religious bigotry, war, poverty, these are merely symptoms of a greater cause. We are the cause. Humanity is a disease that has spread across the face of the globe consuming and destroying the healthy flesh of this planets body until eventually there will be no flesh left to feed on.
Its an over used analogy and it falls down at one cruicial point. We may be the disease but we also have the potential to be the cure. No other disease is sentient, aware of what it is doing to its host. Disease is a blind and unthinking enemy. We are neither blind nor unthinking. We can see what we are doing to our home and many cry out against it. Who listens? Our leaders say they do but they are merely appeasing the most passionate voices so that the silent majority doesn’t get wind of the trouble we’re in. In countries half a world away a demonstration of 20,000 people is enough to change the face of their politics, here half a million voices cry out in protest and no-one listens. We are told we are at war and security must be stepped up so we no longer have the access to our leaders that we used to. They’re walled off behind armed police, roadblocks and barbed wire. Leaders who have to hide from those they lead can’t be very good leaders can they?
I would love to call for revolution but that would solve nothing. Violence piled on violence is never a solution. I would say to change the system from within but to try it is madness when it is the system that is the problem. We could wait for it to destroy itself but what would that cost? How many lives would be lost in its death throes? How much of the world would be laid waste in its final struggle for survival? There is no easy answer and there never will be.
We are killing our home and by inference sealing our own fate. The planet will eventually recover from the destruction we’ve wreaked across its surface but whether we will be here to appreciate it is another matter entirely. Something needs to be done but I’m buggered if I know what it is.

Diatribe 2

The above is a manifestation of the despair that besieges my soul every day. I know it well, I have accepted that there will be days like this. I know that they will pass and there will be moments of joy which allow me to believe that everything will be okay for a while. The moment I saw my child on the screen of an ultrasound machine was one. The moment of that child’s birth will most likely be another. I want to make the world a better place for them. I don’t want them to live in a world beset by war, hunger or poverty. I can’t change the world from a camera shop in a dead end town. I don’t know where the fulcrum is and don’t have a lever long enough to move humanity down a different path. At this moment there is no hope left in me. I can’t persuade the people I elected to listen to me. I’m less than nothing to them. I may pay their wages but that doesn’t mean I can give them orders. I didn’t even vote for them. The way of the world is in the hands of warmongers, fat-cats and ideologues. While this state of affairs continues the whole world suffers. Denying this should be considered tantamount to denying that Hitler killed six million jews.
We allow ourselves to become distracted by the various luxuries and toys that the information age has given us, by a media which is manipulated purely to distract us with images of all the trivia of the world. We are bombarded every waking hour by images which have no purpose but to fuddle our wits and prevent us from thinking about why we are unhappy all the time. We are told that this great new pseudoscientific wrinkle cream will make us beautiful, as if growing old is not a thing of beauty itself. We are persuaded that our lives are meaningless without material things with which to fill our overpriced houses. You may think me hypocritical, sitting here typing this on my PC. In my house, which I don’t like and wish I could move out of. Watching News 24 on a 24″ T.V. which isn’t big enough. But at least I am aware of the contradiction, there are millions who are blissfully ignorant of why they feel the need to consume and watch and buy and listen. I know I am under the spell, and that is the first step towards breaking it. Though what the next step is I have no Idea. I want to be able to communicate with ease. Have recreation at my fingertips and the tools to make my life a little easier. Technology is there to make it easier for us to exist, communicate, travel, work, and play. It is not the route to happiness however.

Diatribe 3

We stare with trepidation into the uncertain darkness of the future, crying out for change and yet shrinking from our responsibility to make it happen. “Its not our place!” we say “It’s why we elect politicians.” To take our power from us? To serve their own ends and not ours? I didn’t think so.
We’ve abdicated our responsibilities and as such get the leaders we deserve. Responsibility is hard and we want an easy life of luxury and freedom. We think these things should come to us with no effort or sacrifice on our part. We are wrong. Freedom is costly and hard work. It is every person’s right but also every person’s burden. It is your responsibility to ensure the freedoms of everyone else. Freedom in solitude is just a prison for your mind.
So we fear the darkness of the future and allow the powerful free reign to protect us from it, whatever the cost. But I say we should take the power back, make our own future and damn the cost. We should no longer let those blinded by greed lead us, blinded by apathy, into the uncertain future. They know the way as well as we do. Our future need not be dark and fearful, neither should it be defined by greed and apathy. Our future should be bright, free and full of possibility and only we can make it that way. Take back your future from the greedy fearmongers and make it ours again.