Can’t blame Covid!

I look around the world and around me….

Over 25 years ago I spent nearly 2 years travelling the world; mainly West Africa and South East Asia, going through some of the world’s most deprived areas and I swore I would try to help. I wanted to be an author, to write about this systemic inequality that we all found so acceptable and this two-tier life of “us” and “them”.

Amidst all that hardship and suffering, I found pockets of civility, along with baffling hate and loathing of others, even among the world’s poorest. Right in there, was further inequality and all the usual trappings of human flaws.

Over the years I have gradually withdrawn from what we saw as the ‘norm’ of having a group of friends, going drinking every other day after work where we gathered and cracked cruel jokes that we saw as idle banter, in which we didn’t give a hoot about anything but just swung through life. I give as much as I can, in annual donation to worthwhile causes in developing countries, but knowing a lot of it probably never makes it to those in need of it. But ultimately, what is so saddening is the knowledge I have, that even if you help those in need, when they get out of being in need, they are no better. They immediately begin to seek to do the exact same things that contribute to the world being the way it is.

A few decades ago, I used to read about China and all the sufferings the Chinese were put through and how they were used as cheap labour, how many Western countries pitched tent there and destabilised them etc. The various Japanese invasion etc. Then came the era of industrialisation; they kicked out the foreign powers, believed in themselves, worked damn hard – selling us the millions of items that never lasted a week – and boom! China arrived on the global scene. Now, they want to be a super power and are starting to act exactly like those they condemned for decades. So, all the aspiration to be different was all just about ideals when they hadn’t arrived at that top table. No different from the every day human: the poor rant and rave about the rich and horrible treatment, but you get them out of poverty and all that happens is they become exactly what they spent their lives complaining about! ‘rich’! And then the reasons pile up: well, why shouldn’t I buy a big house? if I can afford 10 cars (even if only need 1) why shouldn’t I buy it? And so the cycle goes.

The most ill-treated groups in history, tend to become those that later ill-treat others, the minute they get into the ascendancy

Those who complain the most about stuff like racism, you visit where they originate from, and those are some of the most racist places on earth. Yes, perhaps it doesn’t matter and we should be better here in the west, because of past generations of colonisation etc. Such warped logic!

Nowadays, I just do not bother anymore. My gradual withdrawal from the typical day to day of keeping friends, going out, doing the same things as everyone else – and casually saying it’s just what life is – has been on, well before Covid and although Covid has now helped to remove the need to hold face to face meetings (with the usual pre-kick off banter etc), I simply struggle to relate to others now. You look at America; it only took a few months for them to talk away the horrors of Trump’s 4 years as President, the horrors of January 6 and his refusal to even attend the ceremony to handover to the incoming president – essentially disrespecting the entire institution and people of America, the very same who appear willing to do virtually anything for him! We are now in 2024 and he is probably even more popular and more likely to win the presidency than when he first did. Is that not truly reprehensible? What possible excuse can any human being have for that? What have they fallen so in love with? his tweets? his name-calling? disregard for civility? what exactly is the attraction?

You look at the ease in which we are all able to look the other way. Hundreds of school shootings but well, the constitution say you can own guns and that’s that! Thousands getting killed in needless wars and conflicts, we head to Taylor Swift gigs and carry on.

But we tell ourselves: well, life goes on. The show must go on. Ok. Then on our death bed at the ripe old ago of eighty-something we start to hope that there’s another life out there, a heaven, a second universe etc. Forgetting that we are really no different from those chicken and cows we had for dinner over the year. Life is simply temporary. We come through, it comes to an end at some point and that, indeed, is simply THAT!

We bulldoze nature and do whatever it is we feel we have to do. Someone starts a protest, becomes known, becomes a celebrity from it, in comes the millions and they are out of control. It was the same with Black Lives Matter and others before it. An idealist, wishing to change the world for the better, in comes the millions and suddenly you read of the salaries black life matter execs are playing each other – believing they worked hard enough for it – same for execs of charities etc. What follows is news of mansions they have bought etc.

It is what it is?

Oh dear!!