Death
A very good friend of mine recently came into contact with the grim reality of death and my great aunt also died a few weeks ago. It made me think somewhat about the nature of death, and how we humans always, always react to it. Human beings are afraid of death, I think it’s safe to say. No one wants to die. Don’t you find that funny? Don’t you find it a little humorous? No one wants to die and many people are scared of it. Why? There’s a famous saying; ‘In life you’re guaranteed two things; death and taxes.’ A humorous little quip, but one that’s very true; for I can guarantee, with 100% certainty, that every single human being currently alive on this planet will die. I guran-damn-tee.
So why are we afraid of dying? Moreover, why are we ever surprised, taken aback or shocked when someone else dies? We know they’re going to die, just as we know we’re going to die. It’s guaranteed. We have no problem doling out our own brand of death on, say, pesky insects, creatures that just die suddenly because they happen to fly into the wrong room, so why are we human beings afraid of the same death visiting us as suddenly as we visit it on them?
Of course I’m taking a very stark view of things here, and I know that it is often the emotion of the loss that shocks us. But really, when you think about it, shouldn’t we be preparing for the death of all those around us? Shouldn’t we be gearing up our emotions for great loss? Again, we know people are going to die. We don’t even know when. So why not start preparing early, instead of waiting for old age or terminal illnesses?
Of course, it is the human condition that affects or perception of life and death. We do not think about the mortality of our lives, because it is scary. If there is one thing I can guarantee you no one knows, it is where we go, or what happens when we die. And that vast, dark cloud of the unknown, is what makes us afraid. Sure people can put their faith in religion and notions of the afterlife, or find content in being matter going back to being matter and then nothing more, but however you concrete you may think your beliefs are, you can never, ever be certain. No one’s ever come back to tell us of what lies on the other side.
So we try to ignore it, and outrun it. We try to make ourselves live for longer, or brainwash ourselves into believing in a magical cloud city in the sky. Like the antelope trying to outrun a pack of lions, we keep loping forwards, our time ticking away bit by bit, or steps slowly getting more sluggish as the number of breaths we have left and the number of heartbeats we have allocated slowly tick away. Eventually the lion will catch us. And then we die. We cease. We expire. Life ends, and fulfils its purpose.
That is the purpose of organic life: To end. That is all it functions for. In the nearly hundred thousand years or so that human beings have really existed on this planet, our lives have ended. Our time, however brief, feels like a great, long journey, but comparatively, it’s nothing. And by comparative I mean comparative to the age of the universe. All the organic life that we know for certain exists that in this universe has been around for about one billion years. One thirteenth of the entire age of the universe. Human beings, the only organic life that we know of so far to be able to engage critically and rationally with their surroundings, has only been around for a hundred thousand years. Mankind is nothing more than a blink, a sneeze, a shiver of existence and a gasp of breath for the universe.
We are all trapped by time. By finality. By the knowledge that our end is coming. And that is what we try to outrun. Not just by our personal race against death as human beings, but by our condition, by the nature of what we are part of – organic life. Life itself is nothing more than a self replicating system. A heartless mechanism that, when you look at it seriously and starkly, flies in the face of our species’ need to romanticise every second of our existence. In our tiny moment of awareness, we explore, analyse, catalogue and probe the world around us with our brains, all in turn feeding in to the eventual collective consciousness of humanity. Thus we end up with things like history, archaeology, philosophy, art and science. Disciplines that are centuries old, built up over countless years so that we come to share the same experience of them today. We humans seem somewhat incapable to comprehend that our hardwiring, our instincts, our function as living beings, is not to catalogue ourselves, achieve transcendence, Nirvana or whatever, but merely to reproduce. That is what life is, and that is what life does.
We kill each other so others cannot kill us, we strive to cure diseases and ailments, we create Gods and afterlives that wait for us with open arms, so we never really die, we just move to a different plane and live their forever and ever. Our consciousness that allows us to think these things, is really a mere by product of our evolution, and in turn, has turned into another tool for us to try and outrun death. We grow smarter, learn new things, develop new vaccines and thoughts and dreams and machines and strive to become the eternal, undying gods we created in the infancy of our species. The more we understand, the more we can deal with it, the more we can maybe change it. But we cannot. Nothing can. The purpose of life is to end.
We are deathly afraid of the unknown and unwilling to accept the harsh truth of existence. Reproduction is a flawed system, but necessary in order to maintain the existence of organic life. Without it (reproduction), everything would die off bit by bit. Life reproduces in order to maintain its own presence in the universe. That is why we see phenomena such as natural selection, it is the organic life process ensuring that it survives climate changes, cures for diseases (if we’re referring to germs) or allowing one species to become smarter than another. This unconscious system, concerned only with its own preservation. “Life finds a way”, as Jeff Goldblum once said. But eventually, everything; all life in the universe will end. Every fragment of organic life, cattle, humans, fish, birds, apes, germs, tries to outrun death and tries to stave off its claws. But nothing can escape it. We just breed in order to keep our species here, so that our kind may continue to run the race we can never win.
One day however, the sands of time will run out, and everything will cease. The counter will stop. Will it be reset? Could things begin again under different rules? Who knows. It is pointless to theorize, in fact, the only thing we can do is realise that that which we have now, the privilege to exist and be aware of it, is somewhat of a miracle in itself. Don’t be depressed by the idea of death, or by what I have said, as it is merely the hard truth of nature of the universe. All we can do is accept it, and in doing so, maybe one day as a species we will start living for now. Living for the moments we actually inhabit, as opposed to the eternity we wish to end up in. Maybe, if we all realised that they only time that we definitely know we’ll have in this universe is this that we’re experiencing right now, with these fellow living beings, all inhabiting the staggering coincidence that existing in this massive shared experience of organic life, then things would be a little better in the world. Maybe if we realised that this universe is not built up around us, and that we truly are on our own as life forms, then maybe we’d learn to stop bickering, and maybe we’d learn to get along.
Tuesday 22 July 2008
Monday 21 July 2008
FIXING BRITAIN: KNIFE CRIME
Fixing Planet Earth
FIXING BRITAIN: KNIFE CRIME
An endless tide. A never ending stream of violence gushing forth from the streets of Britain. A torrent of the young, armed to the teeth with blades of steel, lunging towards the unprotected, naive people and their values of British society. The children. The children are killing children. One stabbing. Two stabbings. Three stabbings. Murder after murder. Child after child. Teenagers murdering teenagers in a lawless gangland that is engulfing our streets and our lives. Politics is to blame. The break down of the family is to blame. Economics are to blame. Social injustice, the absence of religious morals, no police, political correctness, a lack of discipline, the death of respect. Our society is being torn apart by its future. Adults afraid of children. Gangs of youths that maraud the streets, hunting, sensing, smelling for their next senseless victim in their crime wave of hatred. The streets are no place to feel safe anymore. Adults across the country cower in fear of their own shadow. No one – no one – is safe. Britain is under attack from within.
And the bullshit goes on.
This country, this green and pleasant land, is allegedly under attack. Day after day, we are informed of the never ending violence that is seen on our streets. We’re told we are in the midst of a knife crime ‘epidemic’ – some sort of incurable disease that is taking control of our society. And at the centre of this infinite human drama are children. Teenagers specifically. Children are apparently out of control, they have lost respect, they have lost interest and they are turning on decent civilised folk. Knives have apparently killed nineteen young people this year, and every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to have a solution. Right wingers are calling for greater police presence, tougher prison sentences and a refusal to tolerate this abominable behaviour. They blame the media, single parents and divorce, the lack of religious morality in public life, the rise of atheism, unchecked freedom of speech. And the Government. Left wingers blame economics, the class divide, the fact that no one is willing to listen to and take the time to get to know the struggles of these young people. And the Government.
Both have valid points, but both are wrong.
You see, there is no simple, one note solution to this problem, and let me demonstrate why. Firstly, let’s take the left wing approach. One of the most common arguments is that this crime is spiralling out from a massive class divide, that the wealth of the country is making the poor ever poorer and the rich ever richer. That no one listens to the people on the council estates, and that if we would stop to address the economic unfairness in this country then the sun will shine, the birds will sing, all will be right with the world and the problem will solve itself.
It’s a lovely image, but as you can probably tell, it’s one that I think is more than a little silly, not thought through properly and deserves to be treated with contempt. You may disagree with me, so let me deflate your bubble by asking you this; twenty years ago, were the poor not just as poor, in many cases poorer than they are now? Yes they were. So why was there no “knife crime epidemic” then? Fifty years ago, when the majority of the population was still living in the grip of rationing, the country was economically crippled and its infrastructure bombed to pieces, was there a ‘knife crime epidemic’ then? There was not. Similarly, we do not see the economically disadvantaged in France or Germany or America creating a ‘knife crime epidemic’ in their own back yards do we? This is simple, conclusive proof that the argument doesn’t work. It’s an out, an excuse. A way for the liberals that hated Thatcher to be able to excuse the criminals in our midst from their actions and shift the blame onto politicians. It’s failed logic.
Listening to young people is also not an answer here. Why? Because throughout the entirety of human history, particularly in the west, we have not listened to our young people. If you want an example of how adults have never understood the way the young think, look at the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960s. No knife crime there, at a time when the established generation of the early twentieth century was convinced that society was preparing to collapse. Didn’t happen did it? Why? Because young people became old people. The people that didn’t want or need to be ‘understood’ matured. Many of them are now terrified of the new plague of disaffected youth that now meanders through our society in hoodies, skinny jeans or tracksuits. There is nothing to fear, really, it’s just kids being kids. The ones with knives are carrying them for a very different reason to being misunderstood.
On the flipside of the argument you have right wingers stating that the only way to deal with this problem is to impose strict, unwavering, merciless justice onto those young people that break the law. The Blair-in-waiting, Conservative leader David Cameron, even went so far to say that any young person caught carrying a knife should be jailed. This is not a solution. Firstly our prisons are overcrowded and overstretched. Throwing children in jail for carrying knives – many of whom do so for protection, not attack – is not a solution. If anything, that will compound the problem, because once a person goes into jail, they are often stuck in a vicious cycle of repetition that they cannot be broken out of (there is a simple solution to this; stop furnishing jails like a three star hotel and make the jail time so awful that no one would ever dare reoffend. Tough, and very anti-liberal, but I guarantee you it would work).
Similarly, the problem that we face is not the fault of Gordon Brown. There is a degree of blame that can be lumped at the feet of the Labour Party, mainly for their terrible social experiment of living in a world where no child is ever penalised for anything and is protected from birth to maturity. The blame is never put at the foot of the child, the child is never wrong, and rather the responsibility for their actions is placed elsewhere. In this case, at the feet of these politicians. This is one of the fundamental causes of this problem, but not in the way I have just illustrated.
So I feel that while a portion of the blame should be put on the steps of Labour HQ (not on the steps of 10 Downing Street though, as a Prime Minister is leader of a party elected to govern this country, not a President responsible for running things alone) a massive steaming chunk of blame should be placed on the doorsteps of the men and women that have created this climate of fear in our country, those who are running rampant and unchecked across British society, telling people what to think and why to think it. It should be placed on the doorsteps of Fleet Street, and the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mass news media.
Yes, I feel that the news media is one of the key factors that has contributed to this alleged epidemic. They are not out stabbing people, but they are the ones demonizing these children and making grown men and women afraid of walking their own streets at night. Allow me, briefly, to illustrate a couple of points. Firstly, the use of this word ‘epidemic’, a medical term that is meant to describe a disease that infects the human population at a substantially above average rate. This knife crime business, looked at it through those eyes, is not a epidemic. Especially when looking at the actual figures: “19 young people killed by knives this year”.
19 dead kids is not a lot.
It’s the middle of July. In seven months, 19 young people have been killed by knives. Now, in the same time, how many young people have been raped, or killed in car accidents, or suffered from abusive parents, or committed suicide? How many of them have died by choking, or electrocuting themselves, or cancer, or even asphyxiating themselves while masturbating (a of the leading causes of death amongst teenage boys; Google erotic asphyxiation). 19 ‘young people’ is not a comparatively high number. The reason that this 19 are getting so much coverage instead of rape victims, the homeless, world affairs or whatever else, is because the knife crime ‘epidemic’ is the media’s current pet project. It’s their momentary baby which they know will drive up sales of their publications. Like Madeline McCann was last year. Remember her? How do the media know that these certain pet projects will drive their sales? Because they created them! They talk about nothing but this certain issue, and ram it down our throats until it is the only thing many people can think of when it comes to current affairs.
Also, let’s look at the language that they’re using here. It gives away a lot about the problem we face. ’19 young people have been killed by knives this year.’ We’ve dealt with the number - the figure - but let’s look at the rest of the sentence; ‘Young people’. Makes them sound so innocent doesn’t it? Makes them sound so fresh faced and youthful, almost like they could be your own child. But these people, while young in age alone, are far from innocent. All bar two or three of these ‘young people’ who have been killed were gang members already involved in crime. That kid that got stabbed on Oxford Street in broad daylight? That ‘unprovoked murder’? He was about to be, or had been, (my memory fails me) convicted of rape. He’s no innocent. He’s no ‘young person’. He’s no kid. So this term ‘young people’ should be reclassified. And the few that have been murdered for no reason at all – the real tragedies - can join the same list of other dreadfully unfortunate people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and encountered a murderous psychopath.
The term I have a problem is this one ‘killed by knives’. Did the knife just leap off the ground and drive itself into someone else’s chest? Did it maliciously spring from someone’s pocket into another persons neck? I don’t think so. These knives are held, gripped tightly, in the hands of another human being. Knives didn’t kill anybody. A gang member killed another gang member. It’s people – these ones all reaching the age of maturity, but still at a time in their lives when consequence means little – killing people.
So let’s reclassify this phrase, this talking point that the media uses. Let’s make it speak the truth:
‘15 gang members stabbed to death by 15 other gang members who they probably would have killed themselves, and 4 unlucky teenagers that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they encountered a murderer.’
Sounds a whole lot different now doesn’t it? Tells a different kind of story. The soft, anomalous language has been removed and the blame has been placed squarely at the feet of these child criminals.
And there’s the other problem. Blame. Responsibility. I mentioned it earlier. It is not the politicians that need to be blamed heavily. It is not even the children (though they must be forced to face up to their actions). Children don’t raise themselves. It is the parents. The parents that are sat on their backsides at home while their children are out killing other children. The parents that let their nine year old kids play the 18 rated Grand Theft Auto IV, where you are encouraged to buy and murder prostitutes and police men. The parents that let their 8 year olds watch ‘Get Rich Or Die Trying’ and then listen to their dad and his friends laugh about how cool it was when 50 Cent blew a guy’s head off. The parents that refuse to take responsibility for their actions. The parents who didn’t wear a condom, didn’t plan things properly or who were just too damn lazy to pull out and cum on the back seat of their Ford Escort.
These are the people that have help create this ‘epidemic’. These people who breed like cockroaches, and then let a media that has lost all semblance of responsibility, that has turned a nation of once smart people into celebrity obsessed, fat tubs of lard (mentally as much as physically) that couldn’t find their ass with both hands and refuse to accept any blame or any responsibility for what they’ve created, raise their children. The teacher that tells them that their kid is a delinquent and that they have to do something about it isn’t listened to; they’re punched in the mouth. The other parent that complains to them about their children bullying other children is flipped off. And the Government that tries to stop their kids from chain smoking and binge drinking is ridiculed for “interfering”. The Government tries to impose stricter laws of discipline in schools, parents like this begin complaining that it’s upsetting their kids. Because it’s easier to ignore and placate children than it is to actually raise them properly. And a child can’t be blamed for having no concept of respect for life or laws when a parent has never taught it what the word means.
And who champions their causes? The media. The media that creates these perceived crises and celebrates their lazy work ethic. The media that hounds public figures and creates ‘celebrities’ out of vacuous morons whose only talent is being able to swear at the same time as removing their clothes. The media knows that these parents will eagerly consume their coverage of whatever Amy Winehouse is doing, while the other adults that read their paper grow ever more terrified of being stabbed in the street by child soldiers.
Prisons do need reforming. Economic and social divides need to be addressed. But blame needs to start falling at the feet of those that need to be blamed. Responsibility – personal responsibility – needs to start being demanded from both people and press. The media’s job is to report news, not sensationalise or create it. The parent’s job is to parent, not let a child raise itself. And if you can’t take responsibility for yourself, and do the job you chose to do, then maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore.
FIXING BRITAIN: KNIFE CRIME
An endless tide. A never ending stream of violence gushing forth from the streets of Britain. A torrent of the young, armed to the teeth with blades of steel, lunging towards the unprotected, naive people and their values of British society. The children. The children are killing children. One stabbing. Two stabbings. Three stabbings. Murder after murder. Child after child. Teenagers murdering teenagers in a lawless gangland that is engulfing our streets and our lives. Politics is to blame. The break down of the family is to blame. Economics are to blame. Social injustice, the absence of religious morals, no police, political correctness, a lack of discipline, the death of respect. Our society is being torn apart by its future. Adults afraid of children. Gangs of youths that maraud the streets, hunting, sensing, smelling for their next senseless victim in their crime wave of hatred. The streets are no place to feel safe anymore. Adults across the country cower in fear of their own shadow. No one – no one – is safe. Britain is under attack from within.
And the bullshit goes on.
This country, this green and pleasant land, is allegedly under attack. Day after day, we are informed of the never ending violence that is seen on our streets. We’re told we are in the midst of a knife crime ‘epidemic’ – some sort of incurable disease that is taking control of our society. And at the centre of this infinite human drama are children. Teenagers specifically. Children are apparently out of control, they have lost respect, they have lost interest and they are turning on decent civilised folk. Knives have apparently killed nineteen young people this year, and every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to have a solution. Right wingers are calling for greater police presence, tougher prison sentences and a refusal to tolerate this abominable behaviour. They blame the media, single parents and divorce, the lack of religious morality in public life, the rise of atheism, unchecked freedom of speech. And the Government. Left wingers blame economics, the class divide, the fact that no one is willing to listen to and take the time to get to know the struggles of these young people. And the Government.
Both have valid points, but both are wrong.
You see, there is no simple, one note solution to this problem, and let me demonstrate why. Firstly, let’s take the left wing approach. One of the most common arguments is that this crime is spiralling out from a massive class divide, that the wealth of the country is making the poor ever poorer and the rich ever richer. That no one listens to the people on the council estates, and that if we would stop to address the economic unfairness in this country then the sun will shine, the birds will sing, all will be right with the world and the problem will solve itself.
It’s a lovely image, but as you can probably tell, it’s one that I think is more than a little silly, not thought through properly and deserves to be treated with contempt. You may disagree with me, so let me deflate your bubble by asking you this; twenty years ago, were the poor not just as poor, in many cases poorer than they are now? Yes they were. So why was there no “knife crime epidemic” then? Fifty years ago, when the majority of the population was still living in the grip of rationing, the country was economically crippled and its infrastructure bombed to pieces, was there a ‘knife crime epidemic’ then? There was not. Similarly, we do not see the economically disadvantaged in France or Germany or America creating a ‘knife crime epidemic’ in their own back yards do we? This is simple, conclusive proof that the argument doesn’t work. It’s an out, an excuse. A way for the liberals that hated Thatcher to be able to excuse the criminals in our midst from their actions and shift the blame onto politicians. It’s failed logic.
Listening to young people is also not an answer here. Why? Because throughout the entirety of human history, particularly in the west, we have not listened to our young people. If you want an example of how adults have never understood the way the young think, look at the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960s. No knife crime there, at a time when the established generation of the early twentieth century was convinced that society was preparing to collapse. Didn’t happen did it? Why? Because young people became old people. The people that didn’t want or need to be ‘understood’ matured. Many of them are now terrified of the new plague of disaffected youth that now meanders through our society in hoodies, skinny jeans or tracksuits. There is nothing to fear, really, it’s just kids being kids. The ones with knives are carrying them for a very different reason to being misunderstood.
On the flipside of the argument you have right wingers stating that the only way to deal with this problem is to impose strict, unwavering, merciless justice onto those young people that break the law. The Blair-in-waiting, Conservative leader David Cameron, even went so far to say that any young person caught carrying a knife should be jailed. This is not a solution. Firstly our prisons are overcrowded and overstretched. Throwing children in jail for carrying knives – many of whom do so for protection, not attack – is not a solution. If anything, that will compound the problem, because once a person goes into jail, they are often stuck in a vicious cycle of repetition that they cannot be broken out of (there is a simple solution to this; stop furnishing jails like a three star hotel and make the jail time so awful that no one would ever dare reoffend. Tough, and very anti-liberal, but I guarantee you it would work).
Similarly, the problem that we face is not the fault of Gordon Brown. There is a degree of blame that can be lumped at the feet of the Labour Party, mainly for their terrible social experiment of living in a world where no child is ever penalised for anything and is protected from birth to maturity. The blame is never put at the foot of the child, the child is never wrong, and rather the responsibility for their actions is placed elsewhere. In this case, at the feet of these politicians. This is one of the fundamental causes of this problem, but not in the way I have just illustrated.
So I feel that while a portion of the blame should be put on the steps of Labour HQ (not on the steps of 10 Downing Street though, as a Prime Minister is leader of a party elected to govern this country, not a President responsible for running things alone) a massive steaming chunk of blame should be placed on the doorsteps of the men and women that have created this climate of fear in our country, those who are running rampant and unchecked across British society, telling people what to think and why to think it. It should be placed on the doorsteps of Fleet Street, and the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mass news media.
Yes, I feel that the news media is one of the key factors that has contributed to this alleged epidemic. They are not out stabbing people, but they are the ones demonizing these children and making grown men and women afraid of walking their own streets at night. Allow me, briefly, to illustrate a couple of points. Firstly, the use of this word ‘epidemic’, a medical term that is meant to describe a disease that infects the human population at a substantially above average rate. This knife crime business, looked at it through those eyes, is not a epidemic. Especially when looking at the actual figures: “19 young people killed by knives this year”.
19 dead kids is not a lot.
It’s the middle of July. In seven months, 19 young people have been killed by knives. Now, in the same time, how many young people have been raped, or killed in car accidents, or suffered from abusive parents, or committed suicide? How many of them have died by choking, or electrocuting themselves, or cancer, or even asphyxiating themselves while masturbating (a of the leading causes of death amongst teenage boys; Google erotic asphyxiation). 19 ‘young people’ is not a comparatively high number. The reason that this 19 are getting so much coverage instead of rape victims, the homeless, world affairs or whatever else, is because the knife crime ‘epidemic’ is the media’s current pet project. It’s their momentary baby which they know will drive up sales of their publications. Like Madeline McCann was last year. Remember her? How do the media know that these certain pet projects will drive their sales? Because they created them! They talk about nothing but this certain issue, and ram it down our throats until it is the only thing many people can think of when it comes to current affairs.
Also, let’s look at the language that they’re using here. It gives away a lot about the problem we face. ’19 young people have been killed by knives this year.’ We’ve dealt with the number - the figure - but let’s look at the rest of the sentence; ‘Young people’. Makes them sound so innocent doesn’t it? Makes them sound so fresh faced and youthful, almost like they could be your own child. But these people, while young in age alone, are far from innocent. All bar two or three of these ‘young people’ who have been killed were gang members already involved in crime. That kid that got stabbed on Oxford Street in broad daylight? That ‘unprovoked murder’? He was about to be, or had been, (my memory fails me) convicted of rape. He’s no innocent. He’s no ‘young person’. He’s no kid. So this term ‘young people’ should be reclassified. And the few that have been murdered for no reason at all – the real tragedies - can join the same list of other dreadfully unfortunate people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and encountered a murderous psychopath.
The term I have a problem is this one ‘killed by knives’. Did the knife just leap off the ground and drive itself into someone else’s chest? Did it maliciously spring from someone’s pocket into another persons neck? I don’t think so. These knives are held, gripped tightly, in the hands of another human being. Knives didn’t kill anybody. A gang member killed another gang member. It’s people – these ones all reaching the age of maturity, but still at a time in their lives when consequence means little – killing people.
So let’s reclassify this phrase, this talking point that the media uses. Let’s make it speak the truth:
‘15 gang members stabbed to death by 15 other gang members who they probably would have killed themselves, and 4 unlucky teenagers that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they encountered a murderer.’
Sounds a whole lot different now doesn’t it? Tells a different kind of story. The soft, anomalous language has been removed and the blame has been placed squarely at the feet of these child criminals.
And there’s the other problem. Blame. Responsibility. I mentioned it earlier. It is not the politicians that need to be blamed heavily. It is not even the children (though they must be forced to face up to their actions). Children don’t raise themselves. It is the parents. The parents that are sat on their backsides at home while their children are out killing other children. The parents that let their nine year old kids play the 18 rated Grand Theft Auto IV, where you are encouraged to buy and murder prostitutes and police men. The parents that let their 8 year olds watch ‘Get Rich Or Die Trying’ and then listen to their dad and his friends laugh about how cool it was when 50 Cent blew a guy’s head off. The parents that refuse to take responsibility for their actions. The parents who didn’t wear a condom, didn’t plan things properly or who were just too damn lazy to pull out and cum on the back seat of their Ford Escort.
These are the people that have help create this ‘epidemic’. These people who breed like cockroaches, and then let a media that has lost all semblance of responsibility, that has turned a nation of once smart people into celebrity obsessed, fat tubs of lard (mentally as much as physically) that couldn’t find their ass with both hands and refuse to accept any blame or any responsibility for what they’ve created, raise their children. The teacher that tells them that their kid is a delinquent and that they have to do something about it isn’t listened to; they’re punched in the mouth. The other parent that complains to them about their children bullying other children is flipped off. And the Government that tries to stop their kids from chain smoking and binge drinking is ridiculed for “interfering”. The Government tries to impose stricter laws of discipline in schools, parents like this begin complaining that it’s upsetting their kids. Because it’s easier to ignore and placate children than it is to actually raise them properly. And a child can’t be blamed for having no concept of respect for life or laws when a parent has never taught it what the word means.
And who champions their causes? The media. The media that creates these perceived crises and celebrates their lazy work ethic. The media that hounds public figures and creates ‘celebrities’ out of vacuous morons whose only talent is being able to swear at the same time as removing their clothes. The media knows that these parents will eagerly consume their coverage of whatever Amy Winehouse is doing, while the other adults that read their paper grow ever more terrified of being stabbed in the street by child soldiers.
Prisons do need reforming. Economic and social divides need to be addressed. But blame needs to start falling at the feet of those that need to be blamed. Responsibility – personal responsibility – needs to start being demanded from both people and press. The media’s job is to report news, not sensationalise or create it. The parent’s job is to parent, not let a child raise itself. And if you can’t take responsibility for yourself, and do the job you chose to do, then maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore.
Saturday 12 July 2008
Fixing Planet Earth: The Energy Crisis
Fixing Planet Earth
THE ENERGY CRISIS
The human population is currently in the midst of an energy crisis. The supply of fossil fuels that we have been using for the past two and a half centuries is rapidly drying up, combined with the global warming problem that burning them causes. Coal, gas and oil, substances that take millions of years to create are some of the most toxic and environmentally hostile products that man can burn to create the energy he so sorely needs in order to supply power to his miniature barbeques, cars with TVs in the headrests, islands being built from scratch and trainers with lights in them.
This is an economic problem and everyone is feeling the pinch. With the price of oil skyrocketing, food prices have shot up – entire populations in certain regions of the world are struggling to afford even the most basic food rations. Cars are being run off biofuels that are diverting the supply of ethanol and corn away from poorer countries that need these essential supplies and into the cars of the economic powerhouses of the west. This of course creates the current food crisis, another economic problem that will be covered in a future essay.
However, no one can argue that the energy crisis has caught mankind off guard. We have known for decades now that the supply of fossil fuels will eventually dry up, and that we must wean ourselves off these products in order to help reverse some of the tremendous damage that their constant burning has done to the atmosphere and environment. So why has no action been taken? One simple answer: MONEY.
Developing nations such as India and China, while economically rich, have such massive populations and needs that they cannot afford to invest in alternate energy sources. Developed nations (use any of the G8 countries as an example) don’t want to spend the money building wind farms, tidal gates or vast fields of solar panels in order to provide their energy. And the nations still in the grip of poverty – Africa, much of South America and large swathes of Indochina – simply cannot afford to begin investing in such technologies.
In my opinion, it is the job of the developed nations, particularly that of Western Europe, America and Russia (the countries that cause 90% of all the worlds global problems) to invest money and research into these technologies, making them cheaper and easier for other nations to use them. Do you think the first oil rig, or coal mine, or gas works or even atom smashing plant was cheap to create?
However, the human problem rears its ugly head here. Because there is too much money to be lost by the oil, gas and coal companies. And unfortunately, these companies make up a fairly sizeable percentage of the most powerful corporations on the planet. These businesses are the ones that lobby within governments, often buying or installing politicians into administrations in order to make them more sympathetic to the needs of these global dominators. This is not a ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theory; these organisations do not want to take over, rather, they just don’t want to see their share prices plummet when America or France or Britain ditches oil for 50% of its power output and goes solar. They will do anything to stop that from happening, despite the benefits it would bring to vast swathes of the human population – increased manufacturing means more jobs in certain sectors (possibly balanced with a loss of jobs amongst, say, oil drillers, though such jobs have been continually lost to the advances of computer science of the past twenty years), cleaner energy means less pollutants, power derived from renewable resources means a stop to drilling massive holes in the earth and it makes fossil fuel rich countries less hot points of interest, meaning that global conflicts in such areas would decrease, leaving nations to sort themselves out as they should be allowed to.
So what’s the solution? Well, initially it appears there is no easy solution. In order to put a halt to the energy crisis humankind would have to quickly develop cost efficient, high energy converting technologies to tap into these clean sources of renewable energy. This has not been done, and will take many, many years to do. Nations would have to stop their dependency on fossil fuels, which leads to companies taking huge profit losses, individuals (especially those within a certain North American administration) facing a tremendous downturn in profits and many countries having to find other streams of revenue to bolster their economy.
But wait! Hold your horses! I see a white knight on the horizon! Well, its kind of white, but as he gets closer he seems actually to be green. Glowing green. Radioactive green…
Yes folks, nuclear energy is our immediate saviour. Until Governments bite the bullet and really go for renewable energy sources (trust me, there will be a few ups and downs, coups, possible assassinations and power struggles before that happens) nuclear power is the answer to everyone’s woes. Allow me to point out the benefits: clean, infinitely renewable, safe, cheap and in plentiful supply. The New York Times recently said:
‘For the first time in decades, increasing the role of nuclear power in the United States may be starting to make political, environmental and even economic sense.’
Now, the anti Nuclear lobby – Subtitle: left wing hippies – is dead set on urging a global ban on nuclear power. They claim it is expensive, hazardous and dirty. Let’s just have a look at these assertions shall we? Now, thirty years ago, when the technology to tap into nuclear energy was fairly new, it was a dangerous power source. We did not fully understand that with which we were dealing with, and as a result ‘accidents’ (Three Mile island and Chernobyl in particular) happened. Consequently nuclear energy became demonised as critically dangerous to anybody near it or using it. That is the the first myth of the anti nuclear lobby; because nuclear plants do not give off nuclear radiation in large doses. Even the Three Mile Island meltdown event caused (and this is quoted by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission):
‘… no deaths or injuries to planet workers or members of the nearby community.’
Those people that were exposed to the "horrifying" and "dangerous" radiation were exposed to levels that were equivalent to that of a single chest X-ray.
Now, I hear the gears in your brain turning, conjuring up the images of Chernobyl, a catastrophe where the reactor exploded and burned for ten days. A terrible event to be sure, but the fatality rate was and still is minute compared to the amount of people that die every year mining for coal or drilling for oil. Chernobyl happened (1987) when the USSR couldn’t even power tractors, let alone run a safe nuclear power plant. It made Springfield Nuclear Plant and Homer Simpson as safety inspector look like the most well run organisation in the world, so it was not an event that would have happened with new technology and the proper security procedures in place.
Of course, the other whine that the anti nuclear morons throw at us is that nuclear power plants are a possible… (wait for it) TERRORIST TARGET. Now, think about that, people are seriously saying (the same people that are anti-war and think there is a solution to the terrorism that they claim is a threat) that we shouldn’t build nuclear power plants because they might, someday be attacked by terrorists. I suppose that also means we can’t build anymore planes, subways/tubes, skyscrapers or oil plants. I suppose we’d better shut down New York City, Washington D.C and London. Grow some balls. Everything in the world is subject to terrorist attack. Even you and me.
So, I’ve comprehensively knocked down the three major whipping posts of the anti-nuclear lobby. Let me expound the real benefits that are not mentioned by such environmental pressure groups. Since Chernobyl, engineers have (surprisingly) engineered cheaper, safer, more environmentally friendly nuclear power plants. But by stopping new plants being built, we’re left with the older ones that are not as safe or cheap as the new ones will be. so the technology is so far advanced now, so safe, that disasters like Three Mile Island could not happen again. Opposition to building new plants to create more energy with greater efficiency is like opposing the development of self stick stamps because you like the taste of licking stamps. It’s stupid and it goes to stupid lengths.
Oh but wait! Wait! I forgot the one other problem with nuclear use: nuclear waste. Now, transporting nuclear waste – contrary to popular belief - is easy. Trucks carrying 25 tonnes of nuclear waste have been hit by trains travelling at 80 miles and hour and have also been left in a pool of burning jet fuel for ninety minutes, reaching a temperature of 1400 degrees and not one thing has happened. The waste stayed contained and safe. (These experiments (conducted by the US Department of Energy) were also performed in the 1980s when the technology was far less safe than it is today). Even if the waste fell off a train you could simply just put it back on. It is a myth that it is constantly dangerous; I woulddn't advise exposure, but if it sat there for a day or two there would be no problem. It would just sit there. If it stays there for a week or two, only then do you start to have am issue.
Now, as for long term storage, both the United States is intending to store their waste beneath a Yucca Mountain, in a facility specifically designed to store nuclear waste. The waste will be buried about 1000 feet under the (solid granite rock) ground inside the mountain. This waste will never, ever cause a problem. There will be no issue of nuclear waste. It won’t be a problem in 200 days, 200 weeks or 200 years. There is plenty of nuclear material in the earth already, causing no harm to anyone or anything. You also have to take into account the advancements in technology in the future, that will ensure the waste remains safe. Oh, and no one will forget it’s there.
By building only 400 new nuclear reactors, the United States could generate 100% of its electricity. 100%. No need for oil, coal, gas, solar, wind, tidal. 400 cheap new nuclear reactors and the energy crisis is solved. And if the United States only needs 400, think how few Britain or France would need by comparison.
So there’s your answer to the energy crisis. That’s it. The west must keep researching into solar energy, wind energy etc. in order to wean itself off fossil fuels – particularly oil, the liquid of war - and all their problems, but in the meantime, the entire planet can afford to use nuclear power. I have chopped down the big fighting points against nuclear energy, and outlined all its benefits. As long as we let silly, ill thought out hippy symbols scare us, we’re screwed. Those against nuclear are using dated arguments, and are, quite frankly, ignorant and not keeping up to speed with the world. If we live the present, we run out of energy. If we live in the past we die. We have to live in the future. Energy is like air; it will run out. And mankind will always need more. We in the west, and only we, are to blame for the current energy crisis, and we in the west are the ones that must be responsible for fixing it.
THE ENERGY CRISIS
The human population is currently in the midst of an energy crisis. The supply of fossil fuels that we have been using for the past two and a half centuries is rapidly drying up, combined with the global warming problem that burning them causes. Coal, gas and oil, substances that take millions of years to create are some of the most toxic and environmentally hostile products that man can burn to create the energy he so sorely needs in order to supply power to his miniature barbeques, cars with TVs in the headrests, islands being built from scratch and trainers with lights in them.
This is an economic problem and everyone is feeling the pinch. With the price of oil skyrocketing, food prices have shot up – entire populations in certain regions of the world are struggling to afford even the most basic food rations. Cars are being run off biofuels that are diverting the supply of ethanol and corn away from poorer countries that need these essential supplies and into the cars of the economic powerhouses of the west. This of course creates the current food crisis, another economic problem that will be covered in a future essay.
However, no one can argue that the energy crisis has caught mankind off guard. We have known for decades now that the supply of fossil fuels will eventually dry up, and that we must wean ourselves off these products in order to help reverse some of the tremendous damage that their constant burning has done to the atmosphere and environment. So why has no action been taken? One simple answer: MONEY.
Developing nations such as India and China, while economically rich, have such massive populations and needs that they cannot afford to invest in alternate energy sources. Developed nations (use any of the G8 countries as an example) don’t want to spend the money building wind farms, tidal gates or vast fields of solar panels in order to provide their energy. And the nations still in the grip of poverty – Africa, much of South America and large swathes of Indochina – simply cannot afford to begin investing in such technologies.
In my opinion, it is the job of the developed nations, particularly that of Western Europe, America and Russia (the countries that cause 90% of all the worlds global problems) to invest money and research into these technologies, making them cheaper and easier for other nations to use them. Do you think the first oil rig, or coal mine, or gas works or even atom smashing plant was cheap to create?
However, the human problem rears its ugly head here. Because there is too much money to be lost by the oil, gas and coal companies. And unfortunately, these companies make up a fairly sizeable percentage of the most powerful corporations on the planet. These businesses are the ones that lobby within governments, often buying or installing politicians into administrations in order to make them more sympathetic to the needs of these global dominators. This is not a ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theory; these organisations do not want to take over, rather, they just don’t want to see their share prices plummet when America or France or Britain ditches oil for 50% of its power output and goes solar. They will do anything to stop that from happening, despite the benefits it would bring to vast swathes of the human population – increased manufacturing means more jobs in certain sectors (possibly balanced with a loss of jobs amongst, say, oil drillers, though such jobs have been continually lost to the advances of computer science of the past twenty years), cleaner energy means less pollutants, power derived from renewable resources means a stop to drilling massive holes in the earth and it makes fossil fuel rich countries less hot points of interest, meaning that global conflicts in such areas would decrease, leaving nations to sort themselves out as they should be allowed to.
So what’s the solution? Well, initially it appears there is no easy solution. In order to put a halt to the energy crisis humankind would have to quickly develop cost efficient, high energy converting technologies to tap into these clean sources of renewable energy. This has not been done, and will take many, many years to do. Nations would have to stop their dependency on fossil fuels, which leads to companies taking huge profit losses, individuals (especially those within a certain North American administration) facing a tremendous downturn in profits and many countries having to find other streams of revenue to bolster their economy.
But wait! Hold your horses! I see a white knight on the horizon! Well, its kind of white, but as he gets closer he seems actually to be green. Glowing green. Radioactive green…
Yes folks, nuclear energy is our immediate saviour. Until Governments bite the bullet and really go for renewable energy sources (trust me, there will be a few ups and downs, coups, possible assassinations and power struggles before that happens) nuclear power is the answer to everyone’s woes. Allow me to point out the benefits: clean, infinitely renewable, safe, cheap and in plentiful supply. The New York Times recently said:
‘For the first time in decades, increasing the role of nuclear power in the United States may be starting to make political, environmental and even economic sense.’
Now, the anti Nuclear lobby – Subtitle: left wing hippies – is dead set on urging a global ban on nuclear power. They claim it is expensive, hazardous and dirty. Let’s just have a look at these assertions shall we? Now, thirty years ago, when the technology to tap into nuclear energy was fairly new, it was a dangerous power source. We did not fully understand that with which we were dealing with, and as a result ‘accidents’ (Three Mile island and Chernobyl in particular) happened. Consequently nuclear energy became demonised as critically dangerous to anybody near it or using it. That is the the first myth of the anti nuclear lobby; because nuclear plants do not give off nuclear radiation in large doses. Even the Three Mile Island meltdown event caused (and this is quoted by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission):
‘… no deaths or injuries to planet workers or members of the nearby community.’
Those people that were exposed to the "horrifying" and "dangerous" radiation were exposed to levels that were equivalent to that of a single chest X-ray.
Now, I hear the gears in your brain turning, conjuring up the images of Chernobyl, a catastrophe where the reactor exploded and burned for ten days. A terrible event to be sure, but the fatality rate was and still is minute compared to the amount of people that die every year mining for coal or drilling for oil. Chernobyl happened (1987) when the USSR couldn’t even power tractors, let alone run a safe nuclear power plant. It made Springfield Nuclear Plant and Homer Simpson as safety inspector look like the most well run organisation in the world, so it was not an event that would have happened with new technology and the proper security procedures in place.
Of course, the other whine that the anti nuclear morons throw at us is that nuclear power plants are a possible… (wait for it) TERRORIST TARGET. Now, think about that, people are seriously saying (the same people that are anti-war and think there is a solution to the terrorism that they claim is a threat) that we shouldn’t build nuclear power plants because they might, someday be attacked by terrorists. I suppose that also means we can’t build anymore planes, subways/tubes, skyscrapers or oil plants. I suppose we’d better shut down New York City, Washington D.C and London. Grow some balls. Everything in the world is subject to terrorist attack. Even you and me.
So, I’ve comprehensively knocked down the three major whipping posts of the anti-nuclear lobby. Let me expound the real benefits that are not mentioned by such environmental pressure groups. Since Chernobyl, engineers have (surprisingly) engineered cheaper, safer, more environmentally friendly nuclear power plants. But by stopping new plants being built, we’re left with the older ones that are not as safe or cheap as the new ones will be. so the technology is so far advanced now, so safe, that disasters like Three Mile Island could not happen again. Opposition to building new plants to create more energy with greater efficiency is like opposing the development of self stick stamps because you like the taste of licking stamps. It’s stupid and it goes to stupid lengths.
Oh but wait! Wait! I forgot the one other problem with nuclear use: nuclear waste. Now, transporting nuclear waste – contrary to popular belief - is easy. Trucks carrying 25 tonnes of nuclear waste have been hit by trains travelling at 80 miles and hour and have also been left in a pool of burning jet fuel for ninety minutes, reaching a temperature of 1400 degrees and not one thing has happened. The waste stayed contained and safe. (These experiments (conducted by the US Department of Energy) were also performed in the 1980s when the technology was far less safe than it is today). Even if the waste fell off a train you could simply just put it back on. It is a myth that it is constantly dangerous; I woulddn't advise exposure, but if it sat there for a day or two there would be no problem. It would just sit there. If it stays there for a week or two, only then do you start to have am issue.
Now, as for long term storage, both the United States is intending to store their waste beneath a Yucca Mountain, in a facility specifically designed to store nuclear waste. The waste will be buried about 1000 feet under the (solid granite rock) ground inside the mountain. This waste will never, ever cause a problem. There will be no issue of nuclear waste. It won’t be a problem in 200 days, 200 weeks or 200 years. There is plenty of nuclear material in the earth already, causing no harm to anyone or anything. You also have to take into account the advancements in technology in the future, that will ensure the waste remains safe. Oh, and no one will forget it’s there.
By building only 400 new nuclear reactors, the United States could generate 100% of its electricity. 100%. No need for oil, coal, gas, solar, wind, tidal. 400 cheap new nuclear reactors and the energy crisis is solved. And if the United States only needs 400, think how few Britain or France would need by comparison.
So there’s your answer to the energy crisis. That’s it. The west must keep researching into solar energy, wind energy etc. in order to wean itself off fossil fuels – particularly oil, the liquid of war - and all their problems, but in the meantime, the entire planet can afford to use nuclear power. I have chopped down the big fighting points against nuclear energy, and outlined all its benefits. As long as we let silly, ill thought out hippy symbols scare us, we’re screwed. Those against nuclear are using dated arguments, and are, quite frankly, ignorant and not keeping up to speed with the world. If we live the present, we run out of energy. If we live in the past we die. We have to live in the future. Energy is like air; it will run out. And mankind will always need more. We in the west, and only we, are to blame for the current energy crisis, and we in the west are the ones that must be responsible for fixing it.
Fixing Planet Earth
The following series of articles will make up part on an ongoing series of essays about the problems facing the planet. After a great deal of thought, reading and analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the major issues on our planet can be categorised under two subheadings: Economic and Sociological.
I hope that this continuing series will educate, inform, engage and stimulate thought, conversation and debate. If you have something to say in regard to these articles please feel free to comment, and please pass them on or preferably pass on my blog link (http://milesweaver.blogspot.com) to others.
M Weaver
I hope that this continuing series will educate, inform, engage and stimulate thought, conversation and debate. If you have something to say in regard to these articles please feel free to comment, and please pass them on or preferably pass on my blog link (http://milesweaver.blogspot.com) to others.
M Weaver
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