Nobody is perfect and I am definitely not perfect nor close to being perfect. But I always try to ask myself what can I do? What is my contribution to a problem? And to take some action from my side. Just over 25 years ago I completely estranged myself from my family when it was clear that our views are just not compatible. From being socialites my parents became religious goons who cannot even merely entertain a difference of opinion on the matter. I initially just distanced myself from them while staying in touch with some cousins and other relatives who weren’t sucked into the same mindset, but then came accusations of favouritism and I simply estranged myself completely from my entire family and it has been 25 very peaceful, happy life and I wouldn’t change if for all the tea in China!
Life is always about choices. Yes, there could be mental health issues and reasons why we sometimes act irrationally, but when we go on holiday in Europe or America and we manage to carry our own bags and our arms do not fall off, but we get to Africa or Asia and we are willing to pay unfortunately people to carry our bags and we feel like we are doing them a favour by creating the job for them and paying them to carry our bags, it is the kind of self-vindication that has led to the awful state in which the world is today; where we all see the terrible impact of heroine & other drugs on people around us but you see mothers, fathers still willing to smuggle those drugs – telling themselves they need to feed their children, pay for school, holidays etc. – so, hey, it’s ok! It is the same reason we read about so many deaths around the world, wars, poverty etc., but we only come out to protest about illegal migrants and our discomfort with that.
Yes, the influx of thousands of people, monthly, rowing in rubber boats across the English Channel is awful, as so many of the drown in the process, and when they get here, many are falling into crime – just read about a gang of mobile phone snatchers on the BBC this morning, all largely made up of illegal migrants – and causing all sorts of issues with the local population now getting fed up and protesting, even though we should be looking to address our greater problems (which all predate the entry to these rubber boat folk) which include inequality, poverty, shortage of social housing, broken health system, crumbling infrastructure etc.
But the fundamental problem is that as individuals, we expect someone else, there is always that ‘someone else’ to take an actions, to solve the problem, while we just want our cosy lives unaffected! We want our holidays, our afternoon tea etc. It is the reason why nothing will ever change!
When people look at each other and immediately seek to classify; I mean, what the heck is a white person? or a black person? or a brown person? What on earth is all that? You find people whose parents or grandparents moved to America and settled there, now so intolerant of others coming in, that they are so riled, you see it physically eating them up! There is a need to respect law & order and rules; people should not just form human caravans and just march into the US or any other country for that matter. It is disrespectful and it disregards their laws and immigration processes. BUT there has to be a way – using technology – to address this. Same as imprisonment of non-violent offenders; there must be a technological option, where they can be punished with electronic tags to keep them at home for the necessary time and community work (teaching, cleaning etc) that can also me electronically monitored with all sorts of repercussion that can be applied, to ensure those measures are ample deterrent to offending or reoffending, so that we empty out our jails with countries like the UK should only have around 1,000 to 5,000 people in prison for extremely violent crimes. It is the type of technology that the likes of Tesla, Amazon and co. should be developing, instead of all the money wasted in banging people up in prisons, feeding them etc.
But then, why would we change? It seems many are content with the awful state society has always been in, and the even more awful situations we are now in, and heading for…
Knowledge can improve the world we live in 