Living, Working & Dying

We are born, we live a life, we die. Inescapable facts. Our lives are the jam in the sandwich between the basic bread of birth & death. The important part is the life we live. I believe that once it's over, it is over. What remains is the memories of how we lived in people we knew. Eventually that too will fade.

So what are we here for?

We have mental & physical capacities. Some of us are blessed with greater capacities than others. They are the tools we are given at birth. We learn, we grow & develop into adults. Do we use our gifts wisely & for the benefit of others? Do we live selfishly for our own benefit? Do we squander our talents? The parable of the Talents in Matthew & Luke tells believers to use their gifts. To work. 

How do we see work? Is it simply as something to earn a livlihood? Or do we see it as something to enable us to achieve something, to help our community?

Have we become a sick society? There are approximately 1.44 million unemployed people in the UK early this year. In 2020 there were 1.84 million. In 2019 10% of adults had never had a job. More than one in five working-age adults in the UK were not actively looking for work this March.

The bare statistics need to be investigated. How many of the unemployed are students in education? How many are suffering from chronic medical conditions & are so disabled that they cannot work? Are any temporary residents? Politicians need to identify the root causes of the statistics & they need to have a plan to deal with however many people could work, but don't. Demonizing the unemployed is not an acceptable strategy. 

In order for the UK Plc to function people who can work need to work, for a variety of reasons;-

• To make money & be independent. Money for food, for rent, and to enjoy their lives.
• To have a sense of pride and self-satisfaction by supporting yourself & family.
• Work is one of the primary ways we gain meaning in life - a sense of purpose.
• Work benefits our potential - it often defines who we are - e.g. vocational professions.
• Work benefits our emotional, physical & social well being.

At the tail end of my life I'm glad that I was a teacher. I got huge satisfaction from working with children & other teachers. I'm also glad that when I had to take early retirement on medical grounds in my 40's that I engaged in many interesting & challenging volunteering jobs. I have always felt there was a reason to get out of bed in the morning. 

 

If your day is filled with nothing satisfying you are diminished as an individual. One of my father's more irritating sayings was "it passes the time". Life is about more than just passing the time. 

We can & should  all contribute something. We all have value, we just need to use it.

 

Rules, Regulations & Law

My exercise of choice is lane swimming. I go 3 - 4 times a week for 30 minutes & swim about half a mile doing back crawl. There are conventions of how lane swimmers should behave, to do with safety & consideration for others. If there are several people in a lane it is important that these are observed to avoid swimmers crashing into eachother. I have to be especially careful because obviously I can't see where I'm going. If others don't observe the rules I'm in danger of a collision, which has happened occasionally.

My point is that rules & regulations are there for a reason, to enable us all to live together as harmoniously as possible. Societies are huge, complex systems. They cannot be a self indulgent "free for all". Everyone has to be prepared to conform to some extent. The alternative is chaos & harm.

So called democracies have a legislative framework that enables law to be enforced and operate in daily life, usually created by government ministers. The really important word in that sentence is "enforced". There is no point in having rules, regulations & law if they are just written & not enforced by a body with oversight & the power to impose sanctions.

My feeling is that in the UK & much of the world we have reached the point where norms of behaviour & the rules that govern them are not being complied with. Worse still oversight bodies or even legislators are not acting against serious breeches of accepted behaviour. 

This "laissez faire" attitude permeates from the ground upwards to the very top. The current debacle with the Water industry, the handling of the Covid epidemic, the Post Office Horizon scandal to name just 3. All have gone on for years. All have been shocking in the levels of incompetence & deception that have been revealed. 

Yet the Water industry is supposed to be overseen by Ofwat. Margaret Thatcher's government privatised England's water companies in 1989. The combined debt of the industry was £60.3 billlion in 2023.

Covid cost between £310 - 410 billion, largely due to the lack of preparedness for a pandemic everyone knew was coming. Public Health England had oversight, but were constrained by poor political decision making.

The Post Office is a public corporation of the Department for Business & Trade. There is supposedly a Post Office Redress Service, but I haven't heard anything whatsoever about them in the current enquiry. During the time of the scandal there were 11 government ministers in charge. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses—an average of one a week. The cost of this will be in the billions.

"Headless chickens" are the words that come to mind. But it is worse than that. People in charge have routinely lied to protect themselves or their organisations. Enforcement simply did not exist. Innocent people have had their lives destroyed utterly & even died as a result. The tax payer - you & me are paying & will continue to pay the bill for this profligate incompetence. 

We deserve so much better. We all need to think very carefully about how we use our vote in the coming elections.

 

Public Opinion - Not In My Name

Obviously elections are the main way to guage public opinion, although given the normal low turnout, I'm not at all sure that is a true reflection.

Lobbying & Interest Groups are not a valid way to do it. They are remarkably unrepresentative of public opinion according to research. 

The Media - television, radio, newspapers & magazines, is supposed to have it's finger on the pulse of public opinion. They also help determine the political agenda. With the advent of smart phones & universal use of computers, interaction between the media & the public has increased hugely. The public use of letters & phone calls is far less now. Social Media is an instantaneous way to see what is trending & what consensus is emerging.

Protests, often involving huge numbers of people, seem to be becoming a regular way of understanding public mood. The problem is that mass protests sometimes result in group / mob mentality, leading to heightened emotional states - excitement, anger, hostility, etc. They are indicators of citizens dissatisfaction with government policies though.

Straw polls are a compromise between formal and informal methodologies. They are not as valid as opinion polls, because of minimal concern for the validity of the results.

Formal methodologies for measuring public opinion are usually classified into quantitative and qualitative approaches. They are more systematic ways of ascertaining public opinion & are likely to be conducted by scholars who understand their proper uses, & who are less likely than politicians or non-scholars to misuse them or misinterpret them.

Focus Groups are used by businesses in market research every day. They are also used by political candidates regularly. They are seldom used by academic researchers.

I definitely belong to various "interest groups" & I do lobby a lot & support various charities dealing with the Climate Emergency & Humanitarian Issues. I have quite strong beliefs in fairness & equality. I am deeply concerned about pollution & climate issues. My concern is that I increasingly believe that although there are huge numbers of people who think along the lines that I do, our voices are not being heard & the action we want is not being taken by governments. 

Much is happening here & now that I cannot support. Decisions are being taken that I would not vote for. Politicians are in charge who put their own power & self interest before what is necessary for the future of humanity & the planet. 

The world is moving rapidly in a direction that is "Not In My Name". The LSE has an intersting research project running until 2027 looking at this concept -  https://www.lse.ac.uk/cpnss/research/not-in-my-name  

Our world is very unstable. Making the right decisions & taking appropriate action is vital. We will be judged. But what will our world be like when that judgement happens?   

 

Choices

There is always a choice. Life isn't binary. 

We are sentient & intelligent beings, but we have made many choices & decisions for decades that are harmful or wrong. We are now realising that & paying a high price. Importantly, we now have crucial choices to make to either put things right, or go on mindlessly with those destructive & disfunctional ways of living, ultimately destroying the world we inhabit. 

It is your choice. Each & every one of you. It isn't a choice to be made on your behalf by someone else.

Every day is full of choices - mundane routine ones, what time to get up, what to wear, what to eat...we develop habits & we then mindlessly follow them. Some of those routine choices need to change. For example our idea that water is going to remain drinkable & instantly available in any quantity we need.

Water is a finite resource in a climate emergency world. Yes, we have just had a very wet spring, but if that is followed by a very long dry summer water will be rationed. If the climate continues to get more & more extreme we won't be able to rely on our water system. Our privatised water companies have already polluted every single river in the UK. In a world where millions don't have access to clean water we may well see mass population migrations & water wars. So, do you leave your taps running when you brush your teeth & wash? Do you ensure that you fill your washing machine & dishwasher? Do you use a pressure washer & garden hose? Do you flush every time you pee? Do you make the effort to save waste water? 

Choices, choices. Choices that matter, all the time, because every bit of water you waste cumulatively puts huge pressure on our creaking water system. 

That is just one example of choices that matter. The food we choose to eat also matters. Is it local & in season? Is it fresh or highly processed? Has it travelled miles? If so how, air, sea or land? 

The clothes we wear matter. Do we slavishly follow the dictates of fashion? Some fashion chains change their range more than 4 traditional collections a year. How long do we wear the clothes we have? (I reckon I don't need to buy any more clothes in my life except possibly underwear). What do we do with clothes & shoes we no longer wear? The fashion industry is notoriously unsustainable. https://hbr.org/2022/01/the-myth-of-sustainable-fashion

 

In a year of elections, world instability & the climate emergency make our individual choices matter more than normal. It is critical that we put people in power who do have an understanding of sustainability issues, who are not tied into powerful, wealthy, lobbyists, who will make the difficult decisions necessary in order to come out of this very challenging world situation. We need good leaders because we have had too many self seeking, power & money grabbing ones for a long time. 

Everyones choice matters, both on a daily basis & politically.

Holidays - Are they a Right?

I have just had two mini breaks, 4 nights in Italy on Lake Maggiore travelling by plane & 3 nights in The Netherlands (Amsterdam), travelling by Eurostar. I hadn't been abroad since 2019 when I went to Romania. I have travelled a lot to very far flung places in my life. I have also been lucky enough to work for charities in Nepal & Malawi. I do think travelling & experiencing other cultures & environments is important. I have benefited hugely from the experiences I have had. I hope that the countries I have visited have not been harmed by by my footsteps & maybe might have benefited from my presence.

My attitude to holidays as opposed to travel has changed over the years. I no longer think that we have a right to "go on holiday". I think that we have to weigh up the impact tourism has on the world & it's peoples, which is often detrimental in many ways.

 

Relatively wealthy people the world over have come to think that they have a right to go where they want & do what they want. They deserve it, they can afford it. We think that we need a break & in order to achieve that we need to go somewhere else, where the weather, the landscape, the food, the culture is different. I think we need to re-think that attitude in light of the many issues that surround mass travel. 

I live in Oxford. I rarely go into the centre of this lovely city because of the huge numbers of temporary visitors on the streets. We have students in the university. We have language students. We have tourists. The University alone has 26,000 students. We have 18 English language schools with thousands of students. The visitor population is approximately 8 million per year. That is a lot of people who often walk around in big groups & block the pavements. 

I accept that they also generate a lot of income too. But they use infrastructure & services & cost us money. They use up accommodation & make Oxford on a par with London for housing costs. Not only is it difficult to walk around Oxford because of pedestrians & bikes, it is also a horrendous traffic jam whichever way you enter or leave the city. 

Then there are the elephants in the room. The Climate Emergency - Pollution, Population increase, Species & Habitat destruction, Water pollution & scarcity, Extreme weather events, Supply chain issues, Food security....

I simply don't think we can ignore this any longer. We humans cannot continue to think in terms of our rights to do what we want. We have to start accepting that we each need to change the way we live our lives. It simply isn't sustainable. It is an existential threat.

Commitment & Country

I have commitment to my family, my friends, myself & my ethics, to trying to be honest, also to the importance of the Arts in human experience. Some people feel they have a commitment to their country, I'm not sure about that. It's too wide a concept. Too nebulous. What does it mean? England, the "United?" Kingdom? Does it literally mean the land, the population, the current politics? If so it's an awful lot of very diverse things & people to be committed to. I can't be committed to everything & everybody.

I feel I have to be more discriminating. I have to exclude things - I'm not committed to religious zealots of any belief system. I'm not committed to Climate Emergency deniers, or criminals. I'm not committed to politicians, (but I am to politics). I'm not committed to the Royal Family, (but I'm not against them). Once you start to think about commitment it raises all sorts of complicated issues. 

It is however, important to have commitment to something & some people. If we didn't have any commitment to anything we would be lesser human beings. If we are only committed to ourselves, our own self gratification & importance in the grand scheme of things we would be very one dimensional people. 

I have recently been in the company of a few people who I found to be completely self absorbed. Conversation was very one way, they told me things with very little pause for breath & no opportunity for me to participate in the conversation. It was exhausting & very boring. I found myself wondering why they thought I would be in the least bit interested in or entertained by the recounting of their lives, often over a very long period.

So I think we should all think more about being committed to being better people. Instead of being committed to our own small worlds we need to develop our critical thinking skills - the ability to interpret, evaluate, and analyze facts and information that are available, to form a judgment or decide if something is right or wrong. Instead of just being curious about the world around us, critical thinkers make connections between logical ideas to see the bigger picture. We need to cultivate empathy, interest in other people & things.

Commitment is important, but I think the Western world is becoming committed to the idea that they know best.

Trust & Instinct - The Age of Deception

Trust - "firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something"

Instinct - "the way people or animals naturally react or behave, without having to think or learn about it. A natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity".

The world has changed significantly in my 79 years. For the better & for the worse. I have overriding concerns now about the Climate Emergency we humans have created & it's very possible outcome for all living things. I am both saddened & angry about all the conflict, famine & inequality in our world, which politicians seem unable or unwilling to really tackle. I could go on, but you get the picture. 

However one of the most important issues for me is the fact that I no longer feel I can trust my instincts as to what & who to believe. I always felt that I had pretty good instincts about people & issues. I know what my behaviour perameters are for myself & others. I try to behave well & tread lightly on this world, but I will not tolerate poor behaviour & I refuse to be complicit in it by walking on by. 

The difficulty I have now is that I cannot trust what I see, hear or read in this "post truth" age. Information is routinely manipulated. Algorithms rule. Images can be manipulated & difficult to spot. Conspiracy theories are rife. Influential people in politics, media & business routinely lie.

If I cannot trust the information I am presented with as reputable, how do I make good decisions? I know intelligent people who do believe much of what they see & hear & don't fact check information. In this "Age of Deception" we all have a responsibility to ensure that what we believe & espouse is true. Deception for ones own ends has become a choice for many people who do influence people's lives. It is widespread & insidious. 

The result of this creeping lying is that I do not trust people that I should. Elected politicians for example. I no longer think that governments act in the best long term interests of the people who they supposedly represent. I believe that many basically want to retain power, influence & money. The same is true of the very wealthy leaders of businesses. Self interest rules. People are collateral damage.

We humans have created a monster. Orwells 1984 has nothing on us. https://bookroo.com/quotes/1984

 

Unless we all wake up & realise that we each have a responsibility to stand up for a decent set of values in every walk of life I fear for the future of my grandsons. We created this mess by passivity. We all need to stop the rot now. We can do it, but we are running out of time.