Any civilisation sinks slowly into the night when it loses the will to continue, a society must have faith in its ability to meet the challenges of its time if it is to survive.
In a democracy, and make no mistake nor any form of conceit about 'big brother' states - this is a democracy, the people are to blame for the government. In democracys where people choose wise governments they are to be congratulated, when they chooses badly or foolishly they are to be condemned.
The deferring of blame in our society is a disease of the mind, we the people blame MP's, first past the post, corporations + capitalism despite the fact that all these things they have chosen and continue to choose. The British people created modern Britain, they have only themselves to blame. We could have chosen the Lib Dem's a generation ago, likewise the SDP or a populist reformist platform. We did not.
Like wise nice as it is to believe that greedy bankers caused the Credit Crunch they were far from alone, we elected governments and put our savings into banks that were supported by and supporters of unsecured reserve banking. It was us, the British public, which borrowed on store cards, overdrafts, student loans for idiot degrees, finance scheme widescreens + stupid mortgages.
The Swiss happily live their entire lives with seventy percent of their population in rented accomodation. That is the mature solution to high level prices, not the £500,000 hundred year mortgages we plan to leave for our grandchildren to inherit.
Our first sin was pride, even though our Empire was gone to the dust of history we insisted on trying to be a world power. Even though we could not pay for them we thought every Englishman had a right for his home to be a castle, that every Englishman even needed to own a home. Thus was the difference between needs and wants lost to us.
Our second sin was bad faith, we didn't believe in the power of votes, in the viability of solutions or the ability of human will + reason to built a better world. We gave up in our ability to steer the ship of society and gave it up the stormy seas of the markets.
Our third sin was willful ignorance, as a society we turned to bitter anger blaming George W Bush, Whitehall mandarins, bankers, the poor and the alien. We refused to accept the responsibility for our own inaction and cursed those who's attempts at action were imperfect.
These were the chief of the sins of our time. They were sins foremost against our reason and our humanity, in conclusion they are causing us to fall into blind hubris and will realise they were in consequence and implication sins against the integrity of our liberty.
All we can hope is that in terror and repentance we will make a fast return to reason and belief in the power of reason to solve our problems. In these latter days we can only survive if we return to being Modern.
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3 comments:
Nearly all the problems you mentioned in England are just as prevalent here on my side of the pond. Apart from the ridiculous partisan divide in our culture, Americans have, as a whole, gotten lazy. They have forgotten that the point of democracy is to empower the people, and would rather the government tend to their every need as opposed to standing up and taking the reins themselves, even if what the government offers is substantially less than sufficient. Not only Americans, but it seems that humanity as a whole has become spoiled rotten by our own advances. Instead of us controlling our governments, we whine when the congressman we elected supports the wrong bill, or the governor we supported turns out to be a cheating sleazebag. The core of the issues do not rest with the government, but with our humanity. Our generation has the potential to do incredible things in the modernized world, to bring about reforms and changes that seemed impossible five years ago, but I see that potential being wasted on dead end jobs and degrees that mean nothing and spending all their time worrying about their bank accounts. I see this every day, in my friends, my family, my co-workers, and more than anyone else, myself. We are all equally guilty of sins against humanity, simply because of our faith that things will work themselves out. They won't. People need to realize this, especially our generation and the next, so that we can hold on to what little hope there is that just maybe, its not too late. Wonderful blog Sam, sorry about my ramblings, and I hope to read more soon.
Nearly all the problems you mentioned in England are just as prevalent here on my side of the pond. Apart from the ridiculous partisan divide in our culture, Americans have, as a whole, gotten lazy. They have forgotten that the point of democracy is to empower the people, and would rather the government tend to their every need as opposed to standing up and taking the reins themselves, even if what the government offers is substantially less than sufficient. Not only Americans, but it seems that humanity as a whole has become spoiled rotten by our own advances. Instead of us controlling our governments, we whine when the congressman we elected supports the wrong bill, or the governor we supported turns out to be a cheating sleazebag. The core of the issues do not rest with the government, but with our humanity. Our generation has the potential to do incredible things in the modernized world, to bring about reforms and changes that seemed impossible five years ago, but I see that potential being wasted on dead end jobs and degrees that mean nothing and spending all their time worrying about their bank accounts. I see this every day, in my friends, my family, my co-workers, and more than anyone else, myself. We are all equally guilty of sins against humanity, simply because of our faith that things will work themselves out. They won't. People need to realize this, especially our generation and the next, so that we can hold on to what little hope there is that just maybe, its not too late. Wonderful blog Sam, sorry about my ramblings, and I hope to read more soon.
the first thing that springs to mind, is dostoevsky's 'the dream of a ridiculous man', especially when you talk about the '3 sins'. having written such a rational and unpoetic diagnosis of british democracy and its downsides, failures, and hypocrisy, makes me feel obliged to respond in a rational and unpoetic way. but i won't. i will be disobedient. this is the way forward. and the poem: fitze-fitze-fatze!
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