Is it just me, or do we live in a society which is driven by shallowness and selfishness, powered by a media which has a constant need for stories — whatever their merit. We are no longer citizens but consumers — and boy, can we consume.

We’re stripping the planet of its resources faster than a swarm of seven billion locusts in our selfish and conspicuous consumption and possibly storing up a payback which will endanger if not destroy our successors.

The contrast between those who have enormous wealth and those who have very little grows by the day, and while act of generosity happen all the time, the likes of Bill Gates giving away his fortune to inoculate children is touching, but perhaps he could have used his power as a leading business figure to change things fundamentally in those countries rather than bestow his largesse on impoverished children, who will probably remain so all their lives.

Educational standards are still poor despite billions being spent on schools and universities, and the charging of teaching fees to students, which loads the system against the poorer family. The main cause of educational underachievement is still probably poverty, and lack of encouragement amongst poorer social groups.

We give benefits to poor people which are barely enough to enable them to live on and then penalise them if they try to get out of the poverty trap by cutting them if they find work–usually low paid work. We also pay benefits to able bodied youngsters who’ve never put anything into the system and probably never will.

Social engineering has meant we no longer live in communities like we once did, so there’s no cohesion between individuals or families. Most of us don’t know half the people in our immediate environment.

Self discipline is a thing of the past, children have no respect for their elders or each other, yet gangs of illiterate teenagers will quite possibly stab you to death for ‘dissing’ them.

We encourage a culture of non-entity celebrities, who have no talent except for self-publicity and making money, paid for by wannabe saps who purchase the glossy magazines that feature the latest goss and goings-on in this narcissistic and bitchy world, where the most profound depth is in the amount of instant tan they’re wearing.

We have amazing technology, but do we need to announce in trains, “I’m just coming into the station,” or in supermarkets, “I’m by the baked beans?” People are texting or talking all the time but not actually saying anything to each other–and of course we can attack each other with nasty or bullying insertions on Facebook or sending threatening texts to each other.
We can produce unbelievable graphics in films and computer games but documentaries like everything else seem to be dumbed-down, because no one has an attention span longer than a couple of nano-seconds

Cheap alcohol is everywhere and despite the apparent efforts of government and the law, we have children who have drink or drug dependency hardly before they’ve achieved teenage. The degree of liver disease in those under thirty has rocketed in recent years, and it seems many of them don’t consider it a good night if they can remember it–though the attraction of sprawling in the gutter while incapable through drink defeats me.

It all sounds doom and gloom doesn’t it–this hell we’ve built for ourselves–unless of course you live in a caged–sorry–gated community, with patrolling guards to keep out the riff-raff. It is unless we do something about it.

We need to educate our children in self discipline because that builds self respect. We need to make them understand that riches are in our relationships with family and friends, not just material wealth.

We need to teach them to value education and to drive up standards, in doing so we need to value them as individuals regardless of cost–education pays for itself ultimately. Education and self worth mean less risk of self harm through drink or drugs, so that would improve too.
Finally we need to value others for themselves, we’re all stuck on this floating rock whether we like it or not and life would be easier if we helped each other rather than killed or shafted them.

Conflict only improves weapons and surgical techniques, cooperation means we could actually reach for the stars and achieve the status we like to believe we have as custodians not destroyers of this planet and its life-forms.

Angharad.