A New Year's Wish!

The last night of another year, time as ever flying away at a rate of knots. Maybe a blessing in disguise when you consider the year gone past. Wars, riots, human rights violations, global climate calamity, the normalisation of the extreme, the insatiable madness of the money! money! money! conspiracy. God help us!  

Yes, I do wonder, has there ever been any more mistrust, more misinformation, more hatred and more narcissism fomenting in the world than there has been this past year? 

Historically there’s been no shortage of any of the above but the effortlessness of this spiralling hate seems so much more fluent this year. Casually, it seems that all the perceived wrongs in the world can be placed at the door of someone else! 

Whether it’s true or not makes little or no difference. Anyone with a gripe or a mean streak in them can stoke it up without resorting to even a spell checker, never mind a fact checker, and then drum up a willing rabble to do their bidding. 

That’s the misappropriated power of social media, folks: the mean spirited can be mobilised at the push of a button, fools can come across as experts by typing in a search, heroes can be created by villains all from the comfort of a seat at the bar! 

And if social media did a good job last year, imagine how AI will fare next? 

Anyway, I watched a movie last night on DVD (yip, ole codger me!) which had an ex-war pilot telling the girl he craved why he loved the serenity of flying in the night. From stealth altitude, he could glide through the clouds without ever hearing the sound or seeing the destruction of the bombs that he dropped on the cities below. To him, peace was the silence of the sky on a still night, flying all alone. An end in itself, without consequence. 

My point? Maybe many of us can be like that ex-pilot at times. Perhaps, we all just want to close off the outside world, to put up screens, pull down the shutters, switch off the TV, close our eyes and fool ourselves that out of sight is out of mind and the world's ills have nothing to do with us. 

Maybe, we all just want to think that, on the grand scheme of things, there is nothing we can do to halt the ways of unworthy men. When we should know that if we put our collective shoulders to the wheel we could change the world in a flash. I’d love to think that 2024 will be the year! 

Just a thought!

Happy New Year, and many of them, my good friends!

More soon ...

HNY me hearties!