Famine–A New Approach is Needed
I recently responded to an online request for donations of money or blankets or food for the Horn of Africa by suggesting that they would be better off sending DIY vasectomy kits and condoms.
You would have thought that I had suggested taking the population out and shooting them. Callous was the least of the insults flung at me. In particular, the tirades of irrational and illogical abuse emitted by deity-botherers defied any rational analysis. Abortionist seemed to be their insult of choice. How vasectomies and using condoms leads to an increase in abortions beats me. But there you go. Religion and it’s fanatics has never been logical.
My argument is that for the last fifty years, every five years or so I have seen images of famine from the Horn of Africa. We see fly-blown skeletal babies with big eyes lying inert in their mother’s arms, too weak to tug at empty breasts. We see lines of people stretching to the horizon in queues for emergency relief. TV presenters fight with each other to cover the scene of greatest horror.
It is plain as a pikestaff that the way we have been providing famine relief is not working.
Part of the solution is social - we need a new attitude to famine and childbirth. Just because you have reproductive apparatus does not give you an unfettered right to use it. Children are seemingly not brought into the world in the Horn of Arica as the product of a caring relationship, but as a pension plan. Have 10, because 8 will die young and the other 2 will keep me when I am old. No food, don't worry, the aid agencies will provide. We need to do something different to create a sustainable social environment that does not rely on large families.
Part also must be the move to self-reliance from a begging bowl mentality. We keep providing aid, and as usual what starts as a favour becomes an obligation. Provide a meal today, and another will be expected tomorrow. This is where I do sound callous, the citizens of the Horn of Africa must put down the begging bowls, get off their bums and actually start to do it for themselves. They won’t do it for themselves until we stop providing aid.
Perhaps one ought to consider the role of the Aid Agencies in a dependency culture. Many a cushy job relies on a continuing inflow of charitable donations.
In regard to the physical environment, put 1 000 000 people on land that will support 100 000 and they will die. Finis und klaar. Farming practices must change. You will end up with a dustbowl that will not grow anything at all, even with unlimited water if goats and cattle devour everything in sight, especially the grass anchoring the soil.
Big Food and Big Pharm see famine as a profit centre, and as a way of disposing of surplus stock that no-one will buy anywhere else - look at the reports of baby feed dumped in third world countries because it cannot be sold lawfully in Europe or America.
I may well be callous, but the environment is a self-balancing organism - it will find a way of balancing out the numbers of consumers with the availability of resources. War, plague, famine, take your pick.
Nanny, You are Fired
From time to time, my grumpymeter hits the high stop and winds the needle around it. It’s not one thing, but a succession of small and seemingly petty irritations that cumulatively cause me to fling my toys out of the cot.
Recently, three concurrent irritations have come together like an Icelandic lava flow. I could possibly deal with them individually, but not taken together. As a consequence I now have a grudging admiration for Naomi Campbell, not for the obvious reason, but for her willingness to take direct action against irritating and patronising pratts.
First, there is a DJ on the weekend early morning show on the local radio station. When he arrives in the station I suspect he takes charge of the nearest CD changer, sticks a collection of mouldering old tat from around around 1990 into it and selects random play. We are then subjected to a collection of warbling Diva’s like Houston, Dion and Carey, emasculated boy bands like the Back Passage Boys and a selection of alleged hits we hoped to never ever hear again from the likes of Phil Collins.
I’m sure he’s a nice enough fella, kind to his family and pets, but play something different for the love of Mike.
Secondly, my other half’s Ford. Our parking is organised such that as I reverse out, I need to squidge myself sideways in the seat to look out the rear window to see if there is anything in my way down the driveway. I cannot do that while wearing the seatbelt.
The safety Nazis at Ford have decided in their ineffable wisdom to put a relay in the seat belt mounting. The purpose of the relay is to sound a buzzer if the ignition is switched on before you put on the seat belt. Thereafter it irritates the bejasus out of you by buzzing several times every 60 seconds until you do put the seatbelt on. It is one of the most irritating noises that I have heard since the top of the range Austin Princess had Margaret Thatcher behind the dashboard telling you it was time to change gear.
One of these days I will rip the relay out with my teeth and post it to whoever is head of Ford, telling him, or her, that because of this few cents worth of plastic and it’s effect on my blood pressure, I shall never buy a Ford again.
Finally, I return to my happy hunting group of the airports and airlines who always contrive to treat me like a five-year old. Today, Frau Dingbat of the airlines Valkyrie division told me to stop reading my newspaper while she demonstrated how to use an airline seatbelt. When I responded that anyone who couldn’t work out by themselves how to use one shouldn’t be allowed out unaccompanied, she got very shirty and suggested that if I didn’t pay attention, I would be “deplaned”.
Would someone please tell me where that word came from ? It seems to be part of a peculiar language written by George Orwell and used in security circles to be dispensed in as patronising a way as possible to hide their real motives. Consider, “Welcome aboard Flatulent Airways flight 666 to Hades. As the safety of our guests is our prime concern………”
What a load of scrota, their prime concern is getting as many bums as possible onto the granite slabs that masquerade as seat cushions and charge as much as possible for the in-flight catering. And when did passengers become guests anyway. To hide the reality that the travel industry has started treating them like a flock of sheep on the way to shearing I suppose.
This patronising tour through common sense and things your mummy told you when you were a toddler is followed by Daddy sternly telling you on pain of death not to have a quick fag in the toilet and five minutes of Mr Voice trying to sell you stuff.
Today’s grumpy grump is to ask why we must all be treated nowadays as if we have a mental age of five. The DJ and his inane drivel, Ford and their insistence that they know best when it is appropriate and convenient to use a seat-belt, and airports and airlines who remove any vestige of free-will as soon as you fall into their clutches.
I am sure that if our forefathers were treated in such a way then the DJ would be hanging by his heels from a lamppost, the stagecoach with the irritating buzzer would be on fire and upside down in a ditch, and Frau Dingbat would have been run through with a sword. Can you imagine the Duke of Wellington allowing himself to be subjected to a full-body, groin included pat-down search at Security ? Just imagine that.
I mentioned scrota earlier. I suspect we have all lost ours, need to find them again, and have Naomi screw them back on so we can tell these patronising gits that they will be deplaned if they don’t shut up and leave us alone.
A Step Too Far
There is a joke going around that there is a new South African Tax Return form. It is one page and contains two lines. “State your earnings last year” and “Enclose your cheque for that amount”.
It is rapidly becoming not a joke.
The basic problem, as Mike Schussler and other economists have pointed out is an unfortunate co-incidence of expectation and a poor tax base. The South African population have been led to believe that they will receive first world housing, health, welfare, safety and security, education and municipal services. For free, or certainly with a free element and the rest at at a price way below the cost of provision..
There are about seven million registered taxpayers who are expected to support the remaining forty-four million or so in this expectation. Anyone, even those to whom economics is as woodwork is to Malema will grasp that this is not a sustainable proposition.
Currently higher rate taxpayers pass at least 70% of their hard-earned back to the various tiers of Government, and a never-ending stream of proposals to take more emanate from the higher reaches of La-La land where the Tenderdog Trillionaires live.
The logical thing to do would be to widen the tax base by increasing VAT. That however is not feasible for the ruling party’s political survival, and in any event means that the poor will pay proportionately more in tax than those better off.
The final straw on this camel’s back, or rather the two final straws are the SABC tax and road tolling.
Road Tolling first. There is a proposal that from 2011, users will be charged 50c per kilometre to use the Gauteng freeway network. Fair enough, national highways are already tolled, but don’t we already pay at least three times for the road network, first through general taxation, a second through fuel taxation, a third through vehicle licensing, and an occasional fourth as we use already tolled roads. This must be a record fifth charge for the same thing.
If you commute, this will be a hefty add-on to your monthly living costs. If you live in Centurion or Pretoria and work in Johannesburg this will add at least R50 a day to your travel costs. To add insult to injury, the price of your groceries will increase to absorb the additional delivery costs. If you live on a back-road, it will become a rat run as commuters use it rather than the expensive freeways.
If it is a success, I expect the concept to be rolled out in other provinces. The Western Cape has been trying for years to impose a supplementary fuel levy. Durban has been installing cameras on all major roads, officially for traffic management, but it only takes a wee bit of software to add number plate recognition and a billing module to implement road tolling.
Minister of Communications, Sphiwe Nyanda, he of the two R1.5 Million BMWs that we have paid for, is pushing for 1% to be added to income tax to pay for the SABC. What an admission that TV licences are a complete waste of time. Quite apart from the majority of viewers not paying PAYE, the ring-fencing of general taxation income sets a very dangerous precedent that the Treasury must be worried about.
Why not institute a no-pay, no-watch system. This could be very simply achieved by encoding the new digital signal, and adding a decoding function to the new set-top boxes. Management could be outsourced to MultiChoice, who already operate a very efficient system.
I have a feeling that Ministers believe the current tax base is a bottomless well that can be drawn from at will. However, the reality is that they have gone to the well too often and for too much. The well is empty, the bottom has been scraped clean, and there is no more.
For those with a passing knowledge of economics, we are well down the right-hand slope on the Laffer curve. This means an increase in all kinds of activities to avoid and evade tax. In short, we will entrench the third-world economy of cash-based trade and barter into the middle classes.
Where this affects individuals and business is to increase the pressure on disposable income, such as currently remains, and make previously normal expenditure an exceptional purchase.
Marketing budgets will suffer, advertising spend will fall and be redirected to other less expensive media. Small companies may stop advertising and marketing completely. The ability of suppliers to increase prices will be restricted because it will become very easy to price yourself out of the market. The notion that retail led spending will lift us out of economic recession went out the window as the Eskom tariff increases came in the door.
For individuals, current staples will become luxuries. Spending will inevitably fall.
I fear that the rich will become richer, and the current gap between the rich and poor will widen. Interesting times.
Economic Armageddon is coming
I read today that the SANRAL is to toll the new freeways currently under construction in Gauteng from 2011. At a rate of at least 50c per kilometre, nogal. That will be more than R50 per day if you commute between Pretoria and Johannesburg. This is the economics of the madhouse, and will add yet another twist to the continually rising cost of living for the hard pressed citizens of Gauteng.
I am going to beat a drum that you are probably sick and tired of hearing me beat, as I have been doing for the last few years. We cannot afford to continue in this way without reducing our expectations and seriously broadening our tax base. There is no more that can be wrung from the hard pressed taxpayers and rate payers.
The aritmetic is quite simple, but the Government uses the arithmetic it used when dealing with Eskom, you know the sort that says you can add another 10 million households to the grid without needing to generate any more power and hence no need for new power stations.
The basic problem is that there is an expectation among the 52Million or so souls in SA that everyone will have free first world standard services in housing, electricity, sanitation, health, welfare, safety and security, education, transport and ...............
However, there are only just over 6 million taxpayers to support the other 46Million. That means that every taxpayer supports 7.5 other folk. Even if you say that half the 46 million can't be taxpayers because they are too young, too old, in prison or in hospital, then that still leaves 23Million potential taxpayers sitting on their bums with their hands out. That is each PAYE taxpayer supports 4 potential contributors and their families. Even if you add the contributions of corporate entities, Mike Schussler has worked the number of dependents out to be three, and their families.
Limited numbers of taxpayers, seven times their number expecting freebies. As he says that is an unsupportable economic model.
So what to do ? The sensible answer is to broaden the tax base by exchanging direct for indirect and consumption based taxation.
The ANC cannot broaden the tax base by raising VAT in case it alienates it's political power base, so it must raise dosh through administered prices and surcharges such as taking 5% out of pension funds and applying usage charges to services that are already paid for out of direct taxation.
As an economy we are buggered unless we become realistic and realise that we cannot continue down this path. We moderate our expectations, savagely reduce the cost of Government itself to release funds, let industry have it's head free of laws and constraints, in order to create jobs and wealth. Directed economies never work. Either that or Zim here we come.
There will be a breaking point soon as yet another straw is added to the camel's back. Wait for the Eskom-like fights over the hectic increases in water charges that are coming.
Once Blattertime has been and gone, we are in for a very rough ride. The rich will stay rich, the poor will stay poor and the middle class will join them.
Eldorado or Eldorado Park
We, on the strident bellowing of Jordaan, Spokesman Said from the Government, and others have been well conditioned to believe that this will be an Eldorado year for SA, with hordes of well-heeled tourists flooding into the country. These hordes will be so impressed by us that they will flood back in great numbers year after year.
I suspect that it will be more like Eldorado Park than Eldorado. No offence to Eldorado Park, but I’m sure that no-one comes to SA purely for the Eldorado Park Experience.
As we say in Scotland, "You can't eat scenery". Tourists are the most fickle bunch, and absolutely no basis for a robust economy. Even the Swiss have banks, chocolate and cuckoo clocks despite their vibrant tourist trade.
Most ticket sales, surprisingly so far have been to Americans. Experience tells us all it takes to stop Americans travelling is an inconsiderate fart in Frankfurt Airport by a swarthy gentleman of Middle Eastern extraction. They may never arrive.
The WC is a stunningly one-sided financial arrangement, and SA are getting the pineapply end of the stick.
Business Report said yesterday that Citibank's research arm, Citi, stated in a report that Fifa, the monopoly organiser, is the major beneficiary while South Africa, the host nation "carries a disproportionate share of the cost burden". More detail from the report:
Jean Francois Mercier, Citi's Johannesburg-based economist, said: "Fifa is only responsible for prize money awarded to the participating teams, and compensation for their travel and preparation costs, which in Germany in 2006 only accounted for €222 million (R2.24bn).
"By contrast, the main direct benefits of the event - television and marketing rights - accrue to Fifa, which also cashes in the proceeds from sales of VIP tickets. In the case of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Fifa's profit amounted to about €1.4 billion, or 0.7 percent of South Africa's gross domestic (GDP) product that year."
The full article can be found at http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5383837
It never was a good deal for SA, other than the social feel good factor it engenders and the impetus it gave to some infrastructure projects that otherwise might have begun just before the turn of the next millennium. The tourism benefits, while good were never enough to justify turning SA into Blatterland during Blattertime. We won't be living in SA for six weeks or so.
Sorry to be so pessimistic. The football will probably be excellent and the experience great. But if we add up the numbers honestly afterwards, it will be obvious that it wasn't such a great deal for SA after all.
BTW, don't you think that the mascot is the result of an unnatural coupling between the Vodacom meerkat and Steve Hofmeyer. 
The BackPassage WestBoys Life to Men.
There is currently a musical event in J'Burg starring twelve mostly Irish tenors singing a mixture of pop, swing and opera. Not at the same time of course, or at least I hope not. I cannot imagine anything worse. Except perhaps attending an IFP political rally comprised entirely of Gatsha speeches and no booze.
Whoever thought that twelve pretty boys playing at being the BackPassage WestBoys Life to Men would be four times better than three world class clasically trained artists at the height of their powers needs their bumps feeling.
These post-adolescents rotate their hips and sweetly carol the cuddly hits that have ladies of a certain age going all gooey. Nowt wrong with that, but I'd rather be stuck in a lift with Felicia. I'm only surprised they didn't have the Chippendales as the backing singers.
It seems to me to be part and parcel of the crap that is SA musical theatre.
I understand the need to have bums on seats to raise cash to keep theatres open. Hence the unending stream of half-baked contrived tribute shows. But part of the deal must be that once in a while there is an edgy show to test the boundaries of musical theatre and give opportunities to new talent.
We never seem to get them, we just get yet another potpourri of middle of the road, commercially safe, mouldering old tat. Or Andrew LLoyd Webber.
I don't go anymore. It's far too depressing.
Air Travel – Doncha Just Lurve It !!
I was sitting in cattle class on SAA recently musing over how travel has degenerated to absolute purgatory. Air travel has become an exercise in suffering in (not always) silence, road travel has become like a stop-start version of fairground dodgems and in SA anyway, where is the public transport ?
Air travel used to be fine, simple booking procedures , very few price options, get your ticket at the travel agent or airport, climb on, have a couple of beers, climb off, go about your business. I can remember buying a ticket onboard in the early days of the Glasgow/London shuttle. Not no more. You need a brain the size of a large planet to do it yourself, and a travel agent seems more interested in their commission than your convenience, comfort and safety.
As for the airport, there are all sorts of wee Jimmies and Jessies fussing around treating you as if you have a mental age of five. Need help finding the check in desk sir ? No thanks, I’ll just read all the big bright yellow and black signs with the big writing in five languages, follow the big pointy arrows and go to the end of the queue with lots of people where Mummy and Daddy are standing arguing with the lady behind the counter.
You must now show your boarding pass to a security wonk before you go through the machine that goes ping. Am I an airport thrill seeker who goes through Security for fun and wants to go around again ? If I am, I need to be treated with a soporific, strapped into a shirt with funny sleeves and taken away in a van with no windows.
I must now take out my laptop. Is it because my laptop bag is made of some special material that prevents you seeing that it contains a laptop ?
Anyway, I’ve more technology left in my laptop bag than put man on the moon. Why don’t I need to take out my cellphone that doubles as a Netbook ? Why don’t I need to take out my GPS unit that has a PC chip in it ? Why don’t I need to take out my network tester that is really a PC but just doesn’t look like one ? And what about my e-book reader, a PC in all but name.
Speaking of names, I watched a guy arguing the other day that what was in his bag was not a Laptop but a Netbook, and because the sign said Laptops and didn’t say Netbooks, he didn’t take it out. He didn’t win that argument, and I suspect he missed his plane because he was marched off by two uniforms, one of whom was pulling on pair of long rubber gloves.
At the machine itself Joe Stalin and his Granny rummage around in your smalls, throwing away your shampoo because you have two drops too much and confiscating your nail clippers because you might threaten the cabin staff with a pedicure. My mother, who is in her eighties, had all her cosmetics confiscated and was asked by the orcs to remove her shoes, trouser belt and jacket. Who did they think she was, the consigliore for Hell’s Grannies ?
I once saw a guy the size of a small house getting serious uphill from a troglodyte in a uniform whose hat barely reached the guy’s navel. His crime, having a nail file in his hand luggage. On the flight we were given chicken kebabs, the chicken presented very nicely on a pukka pointed bamboo skewer on a bed of pasta. Go figure.
On the plane is not much better. There seem to be two styles of cabin crew. One is very reminiscent of that advert where Helga harangues the cowering passengers during the seatbelt demo with – “I VANT TO HEAR ONLY VUN CLICK”. The other sort giggle a lot and you only see them when they run over your foot and break your outside elbow with the trolley. They are usually so scatterbrained that they throw your meal into your lap and forget to come around with the booze.
As an aside, British Airways have a special style of ladies from minor aristocracy who used to be Public School prefects. They have perfected the Maggie Thatcher dismissive style of nannydom – “No sir, I do think that three miniatures of whisky on one flight is just a little too much, don’t you agree?”. Just see what happens if you don’t agree. Not nice I can tell you.
It used to be that you took onboard as cabin luggage a small overnight bag and a plastic packet with a newspaper and perhaps a paperback novel and bag of sucky sweeties. Nowadays, you have a family size suitcase on wheels and a laptop bag , or the newest thing, a laptop rucksack. Or often all three. None of which can be put under the seat in front of you since the box containing the video screen control stuff takes up most of the space. In any case, the seat in front is so close that if you did manage to cram stuff under it, you would have your knees around your ears.
Airlines continually complain about the size, amount and weight of cabin luggage. The answer is simple, anything with wheels goes in the hold. If you can’t carry it, it’s too heavy or too big for cabin luggage.
Someone then begins a spiel welcoming you on board, just as the guy trying to cram a briefcase into the overhead locker drops it on your head. Either that or the important businessman with his bag on wheels smashes his laptop bag into your face as he rushes past you to the back to claim the last locker space.
The next torment is waiting for whoever is sitting in the seat next to you. There is no relief so palpable as when the traditionally built African lady struggling down the aisle chooses a different row, or pain so exquisite as when she tumbles onto the seat and a half next to you – not a kilo of her, and there are several, moving in the same direction. If you are in the middle seat , you can bet your bottom dollar that her twin sits in the window seat and will want to powder her nose during the flight.
The welcome speech is followed by exhortations to read the safety card and watch the safety video.
It is a matter of professional pride for regular travellers to look really bored at this point, snoozing, pointedly reading their newspapers and self-improvement books, or setting out their laptops on the drop down table in front of them to show how important they are and that they cannot afford to waste one moment of good working time.
The only safety video I have seen people actually watch with any interest in the one from Air New Zealand which features an air crew, including a comely lass or two, wearing nothing but body paint. I still don’t know anything about safety on Air New Zealand, but I’ll watch it again just in case I missed an important point. It’s on YouTube by the way.
If Helga is on duty she now comes round telling you to switch off your IPod so that you can hear the safety broadcast and watch the video. If it ‘s not the crew headed by the Queen of the Valkyries, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Consistency doesn’t seem to be an airline imperative.
It has always confused me, you can’t use IPods, or in past lives, Walkmen, while the safety thing is on in case you ignore it, but it is ok to ignore it by sleeping, reading or chatting to whoever is in the seat next to you. Strange that.
As some brainy chap said – the tyranny of petty bureaucracy.
Self Reliance with Added Responsibility
I read a lot of blogs, Time, the Economist, and other heavyweight stuff. Some time back I sensed a change in the global atmosphere with bloggers and article submitters questioning the benefits of big Government and corporates treating the citizenry like five year olds. Setting out rules and regulations without explanation or entertaining any discussion, and then applying punishments when we don’t or can’t obey. Just like Nanny.
We managed quite happily without them in the past and don’t now need an array of ill-conceived, intrusive and unenforceable rules and regulations governing our lives. Surely it is sufficient to provide an adult with enough knowledge to be able to come to an informed decision, make up their own mind and take responsibility for accepting the consequences.
It’s true as the London Times recently published Common Sense has died, and we are left with it's half-witted siblings: I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.
A major point of departure has been the air security pantomime where the procedures are perceived as being less about ensuring the safety of travellers and more about ensuring a continuity of funding by the illusion of action. However senseless the regulations might be and however intrusive and counter-productive, they are applied with zeal and vigour at the wrong place, in the wrong way and to the wrong people. I’m sure that if George Washington had passed through JFK airport security he would have run the security wonk through with his sword when he tried to pat his groin.
Discussions have started to morph into a more general examination of the application of authority without the corresponding assumption of responsibility by all sorts of faceless individuals in Government and corporates. Not just in the US but increasingly elsewhere, particularly in the UK.
Seth Grodin has made a very pertinent comment. It goes a long way to explaining the incoherent and irrational irritation of most people when encountering authority, an irritation which changes to focussed rage when they actually need some action:
“Every new rule needs to be associated with one and only one person who is willing to stand up for it and explain it (to your people and to the public)”.
That to me, says it all. It explains why we are so irritated by call centres and other impersonal mechanisms designed to place a distance between ourselves and those we do business with. When we have a problem we want to speak to someone who takes responsibility for assisting us, and if appropriate to be able to punch them. Today, it is the norm that there is no-one with an answer when we ask them to explain why we need to do this. The phrase I Accept Responsibility seems to have fallen out of the language completely.
We need to go back to small and simple. We need to re-establish the linkage between authority and responsibility. We need less State Sponsored nannying. In short we need to relearn how to stand on our own two feet. Common Sense must be reborn.
It's time for the villagers with their lanterns and pitchforks to storm the citadels of the mighty crying "enough is enough, sod off, leave us alone".
Existential Grumpiness
For quite a few years, I have had a running commentary in my head. I suffer from bouts of existential angst in the wee small hours. Originally I thought it just my Grumpy Old Man (GOM) chunterings about the futility and cussedness of most of what I do on a daily basis. However, I have gradually come to the realisation that it is a little more fundamental.
For at least thirty years I have looked around me at all the other folk heading to and from work. I have sat in airport lounges at 5pm on a Friday watching people work on their laptops or have loud conversations with Head Office about the order for Widgets Inc. I have watched countless documentaries, a good part of which have folk sitting in cars, on trains or on buses heading to or from work.
My running commentary asks what on earth is so important that we need legions of people moving about the planet to do it, whatever it is ? And at such a pace. And what value does all this frenetic activity actually add to human existence ? In short, WHAT'S THE BLOODY POINT ? If the spreadsheet isn't finished, or the Widgets Inc order is delayed, what does it matter. The Earth will continue to spin, the sun will come up tomorrow.
Very rarely have I seen someone who appears to be content.
The GOM answer is that for most folk their lives are crap.
They work at a job they don't like, doing something that is probably pointless, reporting to a witless goon. They engage on a regular basis with muddle-headed bureaucracy which does nothing other than to increase their blood pressure. They are married with a couple of crotch fruit, but only because that's what mummy and the rest of the world expected.
They go home to a house that is a clone of the box next door, eat the same mass-produced semi nutritious food and fall asleep in front of the telly where some air-headed Oprah clone is telling them in faintly patronising tones to get in touch with their feelings. Five days out of seven. The other two, they are mercifully released from the toils and spend the time meandering about a local hypermarket in a shell suit complaining about the missing barcodes on the stuff they have bought.
While that view does have value and is true to an extent I now think it is not the whole story, but an externalisation of some innermost knowledge our ancestral genes are giving us.
Our lives are crap because we are dissassociated from them. We go through life on automatic pilot, driven by the needs and desires of others. We act according to their expectations. We clothe, feed and entertain ourselves according to their instructions. All without consciously knowing it.
As a result we lead drearily similar existences in our directed boxes. To a great extent the extended family is no more. Apart from a bit of ocassional weeding we don't interact with the environment other than to eat it. We don't really produce anything of lasting value, except perhaps our offspring. Even so, once they are past about seven, we don't understand them.
I am struggling with expressing a concept here, but the basic idea is that as Eisenstein (any relation to the film producer?) says, all our activities are directed towards acquiring money so we can buy more things. We do not, in general actually add any value to anything.
What does an insurance clerk, or a marketing executive or a software programmer actually add to the sum total of human happiness. Not a lot, I guess in comparison with a farmer, a shoemaker, a builder, someone who actually takes two somethings, and creates a new something from them, thereby adding value to it.
A probably bad, and certainly flawed analogy, but I hope you get the picture. If most of us were to vanish overnight, not much would change.
That's why I am grumpy. I just can't be bothered, and can't see why anyone else should be either.
Iain Robertson