Sadness is no surprise

The world we were promised hasn’t been delivered, a project that's been abandoned in favour of a dysfunctional mess where we’re all struggling to find our place.

Communities everywhere, defined by an allegiance to a belief, a cause, a background or a location, but no big community, no common cause that binds us at the highest level; a collective purpose under which all sub-communities could comfortably sit.

Leaders, self-selecting and elected, elevate themselves to a pseudo-class of citizenry that sits above the masses, and preach their verbiage from their newly-found heights, all the time wondering why they fail to connect, but at no time doubting their entitlement to power and control.

I am sad and that should come as no surprise.

I don’t think it’s me that has a problem here, unless sadness is the sole issue. I suspect those who aren’t sad, and who aren’t angry at the way things are, possibly because they have a filter to eliminate obvious reality from their daily view; they are the ones with the real problem.

I don’t need happy pills. I don’t want to learn coping mechanisms to quell an unsettled mind and help me accept things as they are, I want change and I want it now.

Vote you say. If you don’t like the way it is get out there and vote for change. Really? Let’s take a quick look over our collective shoulders and see what that does, what it really does, and what change it really brings. There you go — nothing. Nothing changes after the vote; the issues remain.

We could celebrate medical science’s ability to make us live longer, but instead we worry about how we can afford so many older non-productive citizens in our midst.

A stronger economy, more business, more people working, more trade … that will fix the money problems. But the profits all seep into the pockets of the already rich, and the productive workers are squeezed by demands for more of their hours and a reduced hourly rate. It isn’t just a stuck salary they’re stuck with, their jobs have been systematically devalued by a society that consistently reminds them that their self-esteem depends upon their working ability, their market value, their willingness to rise earlier, stay longer, do more and still get less. If they’re good, and suck it up, they get to keep their position, and can only expect more of the same downward pressure.

Let’s stop labelling it a socio-economic system, society doesn’t lead, it follows. The society we get is what the economy can afford, it’s an econo-societal world. If you’re struggling to see it, just look at the first thing considered when people need something … affordability; a society delivered with what’s left after the economy has had its share. Instead of being a measure of our success and a means of sharing the proceeds, the economy has become the master, and we have become its slaves.

More. That’s what most want; what they get is less.

Higher. That’s where they want to be, but daily clambering only offers them a chance to remain in the same position.

Fairness would be good; but as Orwell identified in Animal Farm, equality isn’t a recognisable universal standard, it’s a sliding scale.

Fear. Control mechanisms to keep them in place, the consequences of non-conformity are too huge to contemplate, and keeping a swathe of prior failures in clear view, those who’ve fallen from their position and struggle daily, keeps the mass in check.

Abuse. Look into the eyes of a child and see the potential. Witness the joy they find in a puddle or a flower. Then take a look at someone in their twenties, unsure of their own place, unable to find a home of their own, scared of starting their own family, and already in debt. Why do we stand by and watch society turn the potential of a child into the angst of a young adult in just two decades?

Where’s the co-operation, the collaboration, the common aim, the common good and the compassion? All the tools that created the best of what we have are retired, consigned to a place where we can only hope for their return. In its place we’ve installed enmity, grief, division, suspicion and hatred.

So no, I don’t have a problem feeling sad because I am the normal one, in touch with reality and my own feelings. The problem I have is with those who said they’d look after me if I did what was necessary. They have gone absent on watch, they have been derelict in their duty, and our collective ship is heading to the rocks at a gathering pace, with its officers partying like there’s nothing wrong.

Don’t tell me to be happy about that. Really, don't. We can do better.

Failing political leaders do not speak for me. I do not wish to be remembered as just another member of a generation that left this world worse than when we came into it.

--

Words are the original work of the author; picture credit is due to pxhere.com