First posted in the original Lobby Group blog by contributor Coral Bloom-
We have the society we allowed ourselves, unfortunately.
1. Reality TV is the opium of the masses. It used to be the church, but not now.
2. Anyone on the recieving end is viewed with disdain or a criminal taint – the unemployed are lazy, uneducated etc etc
3. You must work hard to succeed, spend years in education. So those who do want to succeed are too busy to look around them.
4. Do not complain publicly. Demonstrators are seen as an affliction on society. And now, when was the last time you saw or heard of a student demo. They’ve all gone, since the mid-80s. Weren’t demos a bit of a right of passage for students?
5. Dumbing down. We all know that goes on. Somehow, the value in curiosity and iniative have been lost.
6. Aspiration. We do not aspire to a better society and a better world. We aspire to be a rich footballer, the partner of one, we aspire to have perfectly painted finger nails, or whatever.
This does not frustrate me. It scares me. I’ve watched this happening since the mid-90s, graduate students who have not one ounce of curiosty, iniative etc.
It makes me want to run to the hills. But then what? Stay there until the world wakes up? Well, they are not going to wake up by themselves. We’ll have to do it, we’ll have to wake them up. It won’t be just this group. In a year or so, there will be workers making the long walk to London again, UB40 will re-release ‘I am the 1 in 10′, The Clash will replace Big Brother….
Now I shall return to working on my paragraphs in a mo..
Some thoughts re: Jay
Why are there no economists and politicians telling us that no matter how much we want to keep on living the way we are we just can’t. Have you heard any of the rent-a-quote economic experts mentioning the environmental crisis that is approaching? I haven’t. It’s like the big bogey man that no one dares mention. I’m beginning to suspect that they just don’t know what to do and so have ignored it in their modelling.
We live in a world where peer pressure is just as important to most adults as it is to kids in the playground. Governments, are made of people. They are just as susceptible to peer-pressure, if not more so. It is the people around them who are the key to the power they seek. They respond to business, the media and then the electorate.
Educate those around the government.
Educate the current government.
Educate the media – they are the vehicle of the politicians and big business
Educate the population.
As long as the global economic ship was sailing along trouble free why would it change direction. The iceberg is in front now. Now they will choose to turn or to go straight on. Their choice will depend on the peer pressure around them.
What we have to decide is the direction we want to take.
I think we are all agreed we want a fairer, more honest and sustainable future. I’ll think more on what you say.