Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Running madly... in circles?

It's been a long time... Not that I had nothing to say, rather that I found it difficult to arrange my ideas in a coherent way. So many things happen every day, in the world at large and in my own life. How can I make sense of it and decide what would be most sensible as the next step forward?

We Western privileged people with a telly or a radio and the tiniest ability to understand what the newsreaders are saying know that the whole world economy is in turmoil. Everywhere, there is fear and apprehension: will I lose my savings? will my employer let me go? what about my retirement? my lifestyle?

Most of this is due to the fact that collectively, we've built a lot on sand or even in the air: speculation was rife... and still is, which magnifies the repercussions of every single event.

Since the West got rid of the immediate concern of feeding people on a daily basis, it has been forgetting gleefully about the basics of life: work, earn (not win!) money, have a roof over one's head, feed one's family, provide for their health and education. The workforce has become a commodity, it's now considered much more clever to make money through investment/speculation than through hard work, a house is just another gamble, health and education funds are being played around with to make the quickest, biggest buck possible.

To me, what we Westerners have been doing... and today's result is perfectly summed up here:



Do you think I'm jesting? Think again.