I shant flatter myself into believing that my life is so interesting that the mundane anecdotes from my life, which i could potentially share, have the ability to hold a captive audience. Instead, i feel this forum is more useful for expressing the more abstract, existential thoughts that pass through my mind. Not that i believe they are anymore captivating, but i doubt my now five followers really care what i had for breakfast (crumpets with honey, if you do care).
So lets start with the big existential fuckers first. Life, death, god. Donne and Ms Bearing would have a field day.
Life first. What is life? Well if youre alive, pondering that question, youre safe, dont worry. My personal belief is simple. Life is simply being alive. Beyond that, life is what you make it. "Life Sucks" you say? Well i say be more specific. YOUR life sucks. Im sure other people out having a fancy time dont think so. Im sure life is a bundle of laughs to those better off than yourself. I get that sometimes life isnt what you want because of circumstances beyond your control. I mean, look at the poor african children, slaving away all day and all night just so they can earn not even enough food to keep their family alive. This is a truly phenomonal process, when you think about it. The whole poverty issue. It never ceases to amaze me. Forgive my tangent, but allow me to digress.
In 1960, President John F Kennedy said "We have the means, tools and money to make poverty history. What we lack is the motivation". Aside from sounding suspiciously like he stole his speech from the opening credits of the "6 million dollar man", Kennedy opens a whole can of worms. On the one hand, yes. We COULD end poverty. If every nation on earth contributed an extra 10% of their economic profits to charity, can you imagine the difference. Fun fact: The Vatican/Roman Catholic Church has the ability to provide enough money and aid to end poverty in Africa forever, almost 3 times over. So why havnt they? Are you telling me that we, as a global population have no motivation to help the poor? Sure, we might tell the bum on the street to get a job, but are we really so heartless towards poor Timbutu and his poor starving family in Nigeria? No. I think as a whole, we care. Maybe not as much as we could, but we would help them if we felt we could.
The fact is we cant. Look at it this way (for best effect, pretend im holding a globe). The world is fucked. The best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance and Germany doesn’t want to go to war. More importantly, the world has no money, we're running out of resources, we cant stop fighting each other and the environment isnt doing so crash hot. Or it is. But thats the problem.
Now all these issues are coming from that small minority of the worlds population that live in the "civilised" western world. More than half the worlds population has never made or recieved a phone call. I dont think most people truly realise how improbable it is that they would be born into a society with running water. Now appreicate that these global problems exist from maybe 1 billion of the worlds 6 billion people. Now imagine if the other 5 billion people starting placing the same strain on the planet. The earth just physically couldnt take it. The sad truth is, we need all those poor starving children to stay in poverty, because the alternative is a) killing them b)killing us or c) the entire planet and everyone on it going to shit.
anyway i got sidetracked and im going to bed. Ill finish the others later.
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