There's near-apocalyptic weather that's resulting in floods all over the British Isles. The government gets increasingly useless by the day. The economy and employment rates are in the shitter, particularly in Northern Ireland. Headlines are full of crime and abuse and car crashes. The most positive story on the BBC news website for NI at the minute is about new buses. Yay.
And it's not that I think that the news media should be selling us good news stories to hide the reality of the situation that we're in - people need to rememeber that the economy is still fairly fucked, and that the government is still shite, and that the NI assembly, at least, are about as much use as scuba gear for penguins. Well, I'm presuming that scuba gear wouldn't be much use for penguins since they can swim fine on their own, but maybe they want to get into deep sea diving or something, what do I know?
My point is, why is the world so feckin miserable and apathetic? Why isn't there someone or something riling us up to overthrow the government or to make things better for ourselves? Why don't we care? I honestly have no idea. I like to think that I have principles and values that I would fight for (not necessarily in a literal sense since I bruise like a Ross Geller), and I want someone or something to come along and inspire me. But anytime inspiration pops along, it seems to let us down and disappoint. Is that because our expectations are too high? We expect everything to be perfect but we don't do a damn thing about it when it's not? Is it because of too much tv, too much capitalism, too much consumerism, too much materialism, too much McDonalds?
I genuinely have no answers, by the way. I'm just wondering. You'd think that with so much of life being so bleak these days that there would be any number of vacuums to fill the void of hope, inspiration and the desire for change, but there doesn't seem to be. I mean ok, we had the Olympics, and that was great - despite being in no way a sports fan, I got really swept up in it but just a few short weeks later and I'm considering the hermit life. If nothing else, it'd keep me dry and away from this rain. So long as I found a cave on high ground, I guess.
I often feel somewhat envious of people (like my parents and siblings) who lived in somewhat harsher times, when there was really something to fight against. They lived through the civil rights movement of the 60s, the horrendous Troubles, the possibly even more horrendous Margaret Thatcher (side note: my sister - a student in the late 80s - once chased a car thief in her pyjamas and slippers with an anti-Thatcher placard. True story). By the time I was a student, no one gave a damn about any kind of politics or issue other than what bar to go to. There were no marches, no protests, no kind of political awareness, even.
But we still have so much to fight for. Even the protests against the coalition have died down, despite them being as shit and stupid as ever.
And rather tellingly, I've just run out of steam writing this. Says it all, really, doesn't it?
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