Life Lessons from a Squirrel

There is a squirrel in my front garden this morning as I work on my computer. It is industriously dashing back & forth across my front garden, presumably burying or unearthing nuts. It is so fast I'm not sure which. It needs to work to survive. It buries food to be able to survive the winter when there isn't much around. The squirrel plans for the future & works hard to survive. It has no support mechanism other than itself, no family, friends or community to provide for it. It has to be self reliant. 

I think there is a lesson there. 

We have just had a budget. Personally I cannot imagine the complexites of being chancellor of the exchequer or a member of the treasury team. Simply managing my own life is sometimes a challenge. I cannot rationalise "quantitative easing" or running a country on massive borrowing & debt. None of it makes sense to me. I don't think I have ever been in debt apart from a mortgage. I certainly don't keep a running total of debt on my credit cards. If I can't afford something I don't buy it.

I believe in fair wealth distribution. I believe that the wealthy & the poor should be taxed in a way that means a similar proportion of their wealth should be taxed. That is not the case in the UK today. I think the most the very wealthy pay is 35% some pay 30% & some as little as 10% while the poorest pay 48%.

It's relatively simple. Our adult population needs to work in order to live. Adults need to pay taxes in order to fund all of the infrastructure of life in a society. The work individuals are capable of doing varies hugely according to age, skills, experience & capacity. Some people are not able to work because of ill health or disability. Unless we all do contribute to that equation, society as we know it cannot survive. 

We are now in complete imbalance & our system is failing. Demographically we have an increasing retired population & a decreasing birthrate. We also have an increasing population on benefits - The number of working-age adults (16-64) claiming disability or incapacity benefits in England and Wales grew from 2.8 million in 2019 to 4 million by March 2025. This represents a rise of over 1 million people, or about a 38% increase. That is not sustainable.

In simple terms we need more young people to be workers to generate taxable income to support all of the infrastructure & pensions for the old that we all take for granted. We cannot go on borrowing money to get us out of trouble. The interest on the debt is crippling & our productivity is lower than France, Germany & the USA. Our growth is half of the Eurozone. 

Unfortunately I don't have the solutions to this. Fortunately I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do think that our tax system is ridiculously complicated & needs complete reform. No one, even HMRC, really understands it. I do think that if we reformed it, so that at the very least the rich & the poor were treated equally & fairly it would be a start.

  

Politically that is a nettle no government has been prepared to grasp, fearing it would make them unpopular & unelectable. But there are countries in Europe that have far simpler & better tax systems than we do. The Netherlands, Austria, and Sweden are often cited for providing a good balance of extensive welfare states, solid infrastructure, and reasonable tax rates. The simplest and most competitive tax systems are Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania. Surely we can learn from them all.    

Pointlessness - Kuzozu Art

Kuzozu is Buddhist art showing 9 images of the decay of a corpse, (usually female for reasons I don't want to think about), left outdoors until it rots & turns into a skeleton. Death is one of the most cmmonly depicted subjects in art throughout history. Buddhist beliefs urged followers to meditate on the temporary nature of life and the physical world. It is arguable that our life span is so short & we are individually so inconsequential that our lives are fairly pointless. Earth to earth & ashes to ashes.

When you reach my age you do think about life and death & what the point of us is. Especially, as has just happened, when a good friend dies unexpectedly. 

We human beings want to believe that there is a point to our existance. We want to believe that we are, individually, important - Our lives are meaningful. I wonder how true that is. How much difference have I personally made to the lives of others? How much difference have I personally made to the universe? Has there been any real point to my life, other than to a very small number of close friends & family?

I think the point of us individually is as part of a whole. Part of the family we belong to, part of the community & country we live in & part of the the world everyone inhabits. We need to divest ourselves of self importance & see ourselves as a small part of a whole something. We have agency to achieve as a community. Power to the people is not just an empty phrase. It is a slogan for collective influence. It represents the idea that a group of individuals working together can achieve significant influence or effect change. It is often used in political and social contexts, from protests and elections to local community initiatives.  

Taken in isolation I think my life has had a little meaning. It hasn't been completely pointless. There have been achievements. I have tried to behave well & work for good. But in order to really effect change for the good I have realised two things;-

• If you have more money than you need you should use it to benefit others. You shouldn't waste it on pointless unnecessary posessions & grandiose schemes. The mega wealthy today do not give enough money away to those in need. 
• If you don't have more money than you need, you need to use your voice to lobby for change. We each have the capability to demonstrate & act in concert with others, who care about injustice & unfairness, to force wrongs to be righted.

No one's life should be pointless. Life is a gift that should not be squandered. We should not be a silent majority.

 

    

Disfunctional

My hearing aids were disfunctional, so too, as it turns out were my ears. That can all be sorted. The hoses to my water softener leaked onto my kitchen floor, disfunctional after 3 years. Obviously cheap plastic tat with built in obsolescence. That isn't what I am talking about. Life is full of things that go wrong & don't function properly. 

I just had a replacement Amazon Echo Show & discovered, having seen the excellent John Lewis tech advisor, because I'd already complained about the first one, it had the same software fault. The setup was not intuitive or even logical & there was a choice early on which disabled everything if you clicked on it. That was very time consuming & irritating & Amazon with all it's tech expertise should have sorted it by now. But even that isn't what I'm talking about. 

Individuals, countries, companies, all make mistakes. No one is perfect, we are all human & while humans run the world there will be mistakes. 

When I talk about disfuntion I basically mean systems. 80 years of life have shown me that there are ups & downs. There are errors & mistakes, inadvertant, careless or deliberate & self serving. I doubt we can change that. Utopia, Nirvana & Heaven actually don't exist. 

But what is happening now is caused by us. Our world is being devastated & decimated by man made climate change. We are creating mountains of rubbish & polluting our landscape, rivers & seas. Plant and animal life is going extinct at a rate never seen before because of us & the way we decimate habitats & landscape. We pollute even the air we breathe.

Our blind & heedless pursuit of profit proves the old adage "money is the root of all evil". 

Our vital societal systems, justice, education, health, food, water, housing....are all failing abysmally. We are overwhelmed with population imbalance & polpulation movements around the world caused by war, persecution & disaster. We are reaching a point where we may not be able to put all of this right. We may already be at the tipping point.

It's no good just blaming politicians, useless & corrupt though some are. We live in a world where there is evidence based information accessible to all. Where we can fact check the accuracy of information to help us make good choices. 

The only way we will be able to solve the fundamental disfunctionality of the world we have created through greed & wilfully ignoring reality is for everyone to work together to find real solutions.

 

It won't be easy, but there really is no choice. 

Owning Up

When I was at primary school I collected stamps - life was much simpler in the 1950's. It wasn't anything to do with the value of the stamps, it was because I wanted a complete set, or because I loved the design. Children then compared eachother's collections, whatever it was, from cigarette cards to stamps. I have to own up to taking a stamp from a friend because it completed a set. It wasn't particularly beautiful or worth anything. But I took it & I never owned up. I don't think my friend even realised. The memory & the shame has stayed with me for 75 years.

"Losing Face" is a concept is deeply rooted in East Asian cultures, where "face" is a crucial part of social order and reputation. It means to be publicly humiliated, lose respect, or have one's reputation damaged, a loss of social standing, prestige, or honor. 

If we do something wrong, or if we fail to do something we should have, there are consequences. Owning up to mistakes or failures can be very difficult, but it is the right course of action. However individuals ability to own up is determined by their moral compass & their self interest. A big factor is also how serious the misdemeanor is. It is harder to admit to something with serious consequences for others and / or ourselves. 

We seem to be living in a less morally responsible era. People with a lot to loose seem to be less able to take responsibility for errors & failures. Particularly people with power & wealth. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it does seem to me that there are sometimes collusions in keeping major failings hidden. Particularly politically & in commercial companies. I have blogged about that before, so I won't repeat. There is a worrying pattern though. 

 

I doubt I'm likely to commit a major sin & given that I have short term memory problems associated with age, owning up to failures, omissions & mistakes isn't hard. But I really do wish that those who do fail in consequential ways had the balls to accept that failure openly. 

The only way we become the best humans & the best societies is if we learn from our mistakes. We can't do that if we don't own up to them.  

 

Forgiveness

Blues music is full of "you done me wrong" songs.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzlHw5lNTt0&list=RDVzlHw5lNTt0&start_radio=1

The human condition is prone to blame rather than accepting that the balance of probability is that it takes two to make a quarrel. Misunderstandings & arguments are normal in relationships. The important thing is how we deal with them. Do we react emotionally or rationally? Do we feel hurt in some way & let that determine what we say & do, or do we look for reasons and solutions? I know what I think.

I can't do the god thing, there are so many things you need to believe that I can't accept. But I do think that there are things beyond our current understanding & we should all try to live according to the basic tenets of all religions. So we should try to be forgiving & accept that we ourselves are not perfect, we all make bad choices & behave unacceptably.

There are two diametrically opposite ways of thinking & behaving, blame & forgiveness. We seem to have become a blaming society. When individuals are able to forgive, even huge wrongdoing, we are quite surprised. But holding on to anger & hatred does so much harm to the person doing it. Anger has physical, emotional, and mental effects on us. It increases the heart rate & muscle tension & contributes to negative emotional states & relationship problems. 

Our expectations of what others can & should do have become unrealistic. This is particularly evident in politics. Watching parliament in action & political commentary is now completely unedifying. Our parliament is a bear garden of an almost complete lack of realistic & honest discourse. It is point scoring, yah booing & is unlikely to solve any of the deep problems we are facing as a country & as individuals. 

There is an almost complete lack of honesty & willingness to take responsibility for errors of judgement or failure to act appropriately. Goodness knows why anyone would want to become a politician. Possibly we have reached the point when the people we would want to be in charge look at the way we run this country & think why on earth should I do that? There is an almost complete lack of trust in politicans or belief in what they say & do.

Someone needs to get a grip & I can't see any evidence that we have many people in any of the UK political parties capable of doing that. So it's up to the public to force their views to be listened to. Where are the real changemakers, the moral leaders who put what is right above pure self interest? Mandela lived this & really understood about forgiveness. 

 

He isn't a lone voice, but infortunately there are not many charismatic & selfless people whose voices are heard. So maybe we the populus have to shout louder & together to force real change & more understanding. 

Sick Society

Approximately 9.1 million people of working age (16-64) are not working in the UK. That is the unemployed and the economically inactive. The majority, (9.11 million) are economically inactive, meaning they are not actively looking for or available to work. That includes students, those who are retired, stay-at-home parents, or people unable to work due to long-term sickness or disability. This represents a total non-working rate of around 25% of the working-age population.

Previously the highest rate of unemployment in the UK was 11.9% in 1984, peaking during the economic recession of the early 1980s. Another major peak was in 1993, at 10.7%, during the recession in the early 1990s.  

At the risk of being politically incorrect I just don't understand this. We are not currently in a recession. Long-term sickness is the reason for 28% of all economically inactive people. More than 1.35 million people who are inactive due to long-term sickness report depression, bad nerves, or anxiety as their primary condition. So I have to ask are we a sick society & if we are why?

I remember working when I was quite ill with bronchitis & even pleurisy. I certainly remember working when I was overwhelmed & depressed. I'm not saying that is a good thing, it isn't. Not least because you will undoubtedly infect other people with contageous diseases & you can't function well if you are depressed. But teaching & being a headteacher means that you are in a caring profession & you tend to put the job first, even if that is misguided & supply teachers were difficult to get.

Having had a lifetime of co morbid chronic conditions I am a believer in distraction technique & the benefit of socialising. I can be in pain or feel significantly under the weather, but if I can take my mind off how I feel I do feel better. For me swimming or meeting friends & family is the best cure. If you are diagnosed with something there is evidence that the expansion of disease definitions and advanced technology contribute to overdiagnosis. I'm not saying that it is good to ignore symptoms, it definitely isn't, but mental health diagnoses have grown exponentially. The rate of common mental health conditions in 16- to 64-year-olds went from 15.5% in 1993 to 22.6% in 2023/24. The elephant in the room is Covid of course.

However I do think that my generation & previous generations were more resilient. They coped with massive problems & the NHS only came into existance in 1948. If we over medicalise we are almost conditioning, especially the young & impressionable, to not be able to cope. 

 

We must not become a sick society. We are better than that. We all need to live full lives & meet the challenges. 

Extinction

Extinction is the complete disappearance of a species, either naturally or due to human activity. Given the announcement this week that Russia has developed a nuclear powered missile that NATO calls Skyfall, which flew at Mach 10 for 8,700 miles & can pierce any defence shield, it seems that we are in another dangerous cold war, with unstable, undemocratic, leaders in charge of several well armed & powerful countries. This obviously threatens mass extinction.

Human-caused extinction rates are currently thousands of times higher than natural rates, driven primarily by habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and over exploitation. Darwin showed that variations in a species may make some individuals better suited to their environment, while less-adapted individuals may fail to reproduce - survival of the fittest. So extinction is, to an extent, normal. 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Challenges like habitat fragmentation, climate change, natural disasters, disease, or competition for resources may outpace ability to adapt. But you can't adapt to nuclear weapons.

The geological record shows five major mass extinction events in Earth's history. The first was 443 million years ago. The fifth was 55 million years ago. Many scientists believe the planet is currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction event, driven largely by human activity. This extinction rate is estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates.  

A 2019 report by the IPBES found that 1 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction. There is a knock on effect of an extinction. The loss of a species, particularly a keystone species, can unbalance an ecosystem and trigger a cascade of further extinctions, that could take millions of years to recover. 

We humans are literally fighting a battle on two fronts to stop extinction. We need to stop unstainable exploitation of the earth & seas. We also need to learn how to co-exist with other nations & not use devastatingly destructive wars to settle disagreements over territory & culture.

 

Unfortunately I can't see much evidence of that happening. Essentially we humans are selfish rather than altruistic. Historically there are 10 civilisations that have gone extinct due to environmental changes, internal strife, warfare, or a combination of factors. This time we are talking about a world mass extinction. 

We don't seem capable of learning the lessons of history. We are in serious danger of being the agents of our own destruction.