If you ask me, the world is in a state for two reasons. Two colliding forces, if you will. The world is in a state because the people who care about money care about it too much, while the people who don’t care about money don’t give a damn. Somewhere in the middle is the average guy on the street, but mostly the world is full of people who are one way or the other.
Here is why both groups are as dangerous as each other:
The people who only care about money only see money: when they look for a red diesel supplier they are only interested in the figures, not the human element of customer relations. This means they drift through lie upsetting people and not really caring why that is the case. Yet when they feel slighted they make it their mission to tell everyone that this is unfair.
There is another side to all this, of course, and that is this…
According to my nan – whose moaning this morning was kicked off by an article in the local paper about Diesel Aberdeen and how they plan to expand, and my nan HATES change – the world is in a much worse state than it was. My argument, which goes something like How can that be, nan? The world was at war before in a big way with Germany, and now it isn’t doesn’t hold much water with her. She says that all that has happened is the war has spread to another nation. As you can see my nan is a real laugh to hang around with!
But anyway, enough of my nan. What she fails to understand, sadly, is that it really is all down to communication: nowadays we all have access to more news about various parts of the world, and so it’s so much easier to learn about both good and bad things happening anywhere at any time. This, I suppose, gives some people the illusion that there are more bad things happening than there were. Of course, there’s no way on earth I would ever dream of bringing this argument up in front of my nan; after many years of training as a professional arguer, she’s more than adept at holding her own on this score…
With better technology we hold more power than ever before
Still, sometimes I can’t help but think that nan might be right…that the world is getting worse after all. But I’m sure that’s bound to crop up from time-to-time in the mind of a modern human-being. It has to. If it didn’t it’d probably mean that you don’t care, which would be a bit sad, I think.
And who knows, there may be an ounce of truth in nan’s argument. One thing I haven’t covered yet is that technology has made a number of things worse. For example, the oil-spill debacles of the last 10 years. It’s fair to say that these would never have happened a hundred years ago, because although disasters were a common occurrence, disasters of the kind of magnitude as per the BP oil spill were out of the question.
And there is the trade off. With better technology we hold more power than ever before to make things better. But to me it seems that as we get more advanced, the risks also go up and the stakes get higher.
But such is life, I suppose. Right, I better go, nan needs someone to have a damn good moan at (sorry, with).
Writing is weird, and all my friends who write experience the same thing: once you start, you can’t stop. Even if you wanted to. That’s the good and the bad about writing in one sentence really. But, as much as it sometimes irritates me that I can’t seem to be away from my computer for more than five minutes at a time, I do love it and wouldn’t change the way I am for the world.
Different every time, and occasionally like this:
I’ll be walking along the street minding my own business. Then, out of nowhere, the magical writing machine in my head will start putting sentences together. Actually that’s inaccurate. To begin with it’s just a word, a phrase – could be Garmin 610 or a name on a sign hanging above a shop window. Then an emotion is triggered. Love, hate, adoration. Or a memory. A smell. A record in my brain of something.
I have found a pen and scrap of paper in my bag and am recording these once-in-a-lifetime thoughts down on paper, so as they never get lost ever again
And then come the words, flowing freely, recording themselves without me having to do anything.The words appear on a blank sheet of paper in my brain. They scramble and un-scramble themselves, fighting for supremacy, trying their best to organise themselves into some kind of narrative which makes proper sense.
That’s when I start to memorise the words and interpret them differently, trying out different arrangements.The words slow their panicked nature as they fit together better, and become anxious and excitable when nothing seems to fit.
Within a minute or so, if I am lucky — and I am not always lucky…sometimes I am quite the opposite, in fact — I have found a pen and scrap of paper in my bag and am recording these once-in-a-lifetime thoughts down on paper, so as they never get lost ever again. Soon, I have something resembling a cohesive argument or statement or point. When I get home I tamper some more. Sometimes the process is fast and easy. Other times the message that was so strong and important in the confines of my head becomes vague, distant, almost as if someone planted it in my head. Someone who couldn’t write very well.
This is why writing fascinates me so. It is constantly evolving, constantly progressing, always changing and metastasising into something new and out-of-the-ordinary. The point? Ideas are special. No two are ever the same. Every word is a vital part of a puzzle which will, eventually, become the theme tune to your life.
There’s a Mr Bean sketch – you know Mr Bean, you must do, he’s the comedy character on British TV who offends literally everyone, including his own teddy… – where he’s in a restaurant and he gets given a plate of meat which is clearly some kind of a delicacy. Anyway, he hates it, and spends the whole 30 minute episode trying to get rid of the meat in various ways. Hiding it in a vase, stuffing it in a More
Being called “Barbara” is a strange thing, let me tell you. And I would know, wouldn’t I? I’ve been one all my life, so almost nobody else on Earth is in a better position to tell you about this than me.
And it’s hard sometimes, oh it is hard. There are two main things I despise about being called the B word, and they are as follows:
1) Without even asking first, some deranged people think it’s perfectly acceptable to More
I am being given an initiation into children’s American television. My husband swears that without fully understanding children’s television in the United States I will never truly understand him. I am a bit reluctant, it is like making me promise DNA Testing for our first child, but I love him so I have embarked on a voyage of discovery based on you tube. The first time I watched classic Sesame Street, I knew that he was right. You have public More
Knowing what I do now, I wish I’d have read a post about medical insurance abroad sooner. But no, instead I was bogged down with work and looking at bad credit credit cards and monitoring who was eligible for even more credit. Had I researched medical insurance properly before I went to Spain, I am sure I’d be a lot better off now.
I recent heard a friend of mine who visited me at home talk about having to have her only son do a hair drug test to see if he has been doing drug for a long time. It is so hard to believe almost like the fact that many women have yeast infection. For some reason I thought it was only me until I went to my doctor. He also suggested garlic as a natural remedy for yeast infection. So More
People in the United Kingdom don’t really have a good grasp of what life would be like without the NHS. They don’t understand the struggle that people in the rest of the world have to deal with. It isn’t as easy as everybody getting their own global sim for health services. I was lucky, of course, I was forewarned and had great travel insurance that covered my medical bills. A friend of mine, however, wasn’t so lucky, broke her wrist More
A friend of mine is trying to save her marriage by taking burlesque lessons, this is about as hopeful as David Cameron trying to create a Big Society by declaring that multiculturalism is dead. Do these people have too much time on their hands and not enough cells in their brain?
Is that a redundant question? Right, so, if we are all working together to try to make the planet survive, we will possibly have less time to hate. More
