Important stuff

“My father committed suicide because the morning newspapers depressed him.” – Boris Yellnikoff (Whatever Works, 2009)

I usually don’t blog about these important things written in morning newspapers, focussing instead on the banal and trivial. It helps me to avoid having to think about our impending doom, and no one wants another fluff piece on political confectionary anyway.

But sadly, the world has come/is coming to another crossroads. Human beings have started to realise that in our need to see everything and do everything, we are trying to evolve too fast. The conflict between the variedness of liberals and puritanism of conservatives has become so stark that the liberals are now viewed as an entirely new species by the conservatives. The conservatives have stopped trying to educate them in their beliefs and values and have gone on an outright war against them.

The human race is in labour. The old are hurt and baffled as the new tries to break out of its grasp. The birth of this new species promises to destroy all the cherished traditions and customs that the old hang on to with all their lives.

But this is a natural process of nature. Usually the new evolve from the old in a slow and gradual process so that the old never feel the changing landscape as they go on with their lives. However, this process has suddenly received a boost of cocaine. The flow of information used to occur at a speed it took for newspapers to be delivered. That speed was conceivable and it gave time to readjust to shifting paradigms. But the internet has information flowing on steroids. We are bombarded by so much information at a blink of an eyelid, that our natural senses are getting disillusioned and then rejecting it. Yet from this whirlpool is evolving a new species of humans who can remain on top of it all, and pick the wheat from the chaff. This is making the old feel insecure and vulnerable and in today’s jargon, ‘unprotected’. The slow evolution process has been replaced by a crash-and-burn method.

As the gardens of the world become more colourful than ever, the big old pine forests are feeling disturbed. Although this explosion is good to look at from time to time, some are afraid that new colours will all mix with the old ones to create a ghastly yellow, or some such.

But these suppositions have arisen from a way of thinking deep-rooted in tradition and faith, whichever they maybe be. The practice of questioning prevalent conceptions was nearly absent, or present as such small cracks that the rest of the statue never noticed when the cracks were repaired using something as inappropriate as putty.

The internet has given every one of us the unique superhuman powers to question everything and seek the truth, or the post-truth if the truth does not satisfy. The liberals, always defined by their curiosity have embraced it. But the conservatives, not interested in the truth as much as their own antiquated beliefs, have used this to create echo chambers to preserve their beliefs, traditions and what passes as moralities.

The ensuing segregation led the birds of the liberal feather to flock together in the big colourful metropolitan cities, while the conservatives remained steadfast with their ranches and farms, communing with the cows, the sheep and with pals and buddies sharing similar racist, misogynist ideas.

Unfortunately, the lack of a fixed belief system however antiquated they might be, has rendered the liberals spineless and reactionary. They don’t organise well against the rotting pillars of strength that the conservatives stand for. They question everything and believe in nothing. But believing in nothing is like trying to lean against a pillar of air. Against the hard-on-d conservatives they fall like the autumnal yellow leaves, beautiful, ineffectual.

The recent events in the USA including the disastrous election, the UK including Brexit, and the world movement towards more ‘right-wing’ governments is proof that the anti-belief ideology of liberals is failing. Whether it is making America great again or Britain strong again, people with long and overgrown roots are standing strong in the winds of change, while the delicate lilies are rotting in the pond scum.

It is just sad to see that some of those strong rooted individuals have grown so bitter that they will not allow anything beautiful to survive around them, obtaining an almost sadistic pleasure akin to smoking the beehive for its honey or the earth for its oil. It is also sad to see how the liberals have fallen victims to their own intellect. Information has filled the metaphoric glass to the brim and is now overflowing making people obese with ideas. Some are fighting ‘back again’, creating holes in the glass to reduce the daily dose of truth to a manageable level, and filling it instead with comforting gossip of heresy and speculation.

People like to believe in things to get through life comfortably. Some of these things might be toxic and damaging, ironically embedded in same the roots holding us strong against the wind. We have declared war on these beliefs, yet have none to replace them.

But, we must fight on. New ideas take time to get assimilated, and like many such setbacks before, this is just a minor setback in the infinite journey of human evolution. The truth must keep flowing like a gentle brook or like a torrent, and evolution must keep moving forward, bringing with it the acceptance of diversity and the dismantling of antiquated dogmas. Because life is always about change, and it's constant change that defines life.