We don’t learn how to live any more. So much has gone or is going. We are losing handwriting, spelling, grammar, walking as a mode of transport, playing on the streets. We are unwittingly performing experiments on our children, for we don’t know what the outcome will be, for them or the world.
Does this sound like a grumpy old man railing at change? Please don’t see it that way. I am proud to be part of this astonishing era. Like you, I have my part to play. Like yours, my perspective, from an exquisitely beautiful part of England (yet craning my neck to include the ugliest and most desperate situations of my brothers and sisters everywhere), has its unique value.
We are gaining more than we are losing, if only we know how to adjust. On the plus side, we are gradually losing religion. What shape of hole does it leave? It leaves a search for happiness.
In the United Kingdom, our Government for the last nine years has been telling us how to live, in so many ways. Margaret Thatcher had imposed her stamp in the Eighties and now it is the born-again Blair. The British, who boast that they “never never never will be slaves”, do seem to behave like sheep all the same. The media set the agenda, and the people seem to think they have done their bit when they say “yes” or “no” to whatever issues the media serve up, as if marking an “X” on a succession of ballot papers. It’s not surprising, because we have sheepishly accepted that this the only democracy we are allowed. Meanwhile, on every issue, whether locally or on the world’s stage, it is violence and unfair use of power which is the most effective way to get things done. This of course is not news. It’s the oldest fact of the human era and remains the case today.
But in all the horror of the 20th century, there was Gandhi, there were pacifists, there was the Gaia hypothesis, and there was the birth of a global consciousness. There were freedom marches, desegregation, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley. We the people do have power, but we must know how to live.
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom? –
’cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
a wayfarer’s notes 
It is, I think, a tough time in which to grow old. What you outline is, of course, at least as bad in the states. And it's hard to see how things get turned around anytime in your lifespan, if you're much beyond the age of one or two. The entrenched powers are so well entrenched.
In the longer run, we're a species that's too stupid to live, or not; and I find an inherent justice to that which is somewhat satisfying. Life on this planet has a stupendously long time to work with, and if she comes up with a better arrangement than what we're cooking up, I say more power to her.
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You've summed up Gaia, and the state of the world, with the confronting humour of a Douglas Adams. Good on you mate, as we Aussies say! You make blogging worthwhile.
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