Category: Writing & Books

Why Are We All Angry?

anger

Here in the Western World, we live in the most benevolent civilization in all human history.  The irony is a lot of us seem pissed off about it.  Odd as it may seem, a ton of people spend a ton of time complaining about our world and the collective bounty of 3,000 years of economic and social success.  Why?  There are three reasons.  I like to call them the Killer Bs.

Bewildered — Like our medieval ancestors, we don’t understand anything about the world we live in.  Face it, folks!  We’re stupid.  These days, most people couldn’t tell you the difference between an aardvark and an antelope if you put burning coals between their toes.  And it’s not just zoology that stumps us.  Common knowledge simply isn’t common anymore.  We might be able to read and write, but we’re culturally, historically, economically, scientifically and mathematically illiterate — and proud of it.  For some weird reason, smart is not a currency we use or even value.  However, without these intellectual building blocks, it’s impossible to make sense out of the 1,001 complex systems that govern contemporary life or to understand our place in it.  At least a 12th century peasant could rely on God to justify his existence.  Unfortunately, since Nietzsche shot his mouth off, we don’t even have that option.  So, unable to figure out the simple how and why of what’s going on, many people boil over with frustration and say “Screw it!”

Bored — Intellectually divorced from reality, we have retreated behind our videos screens which filter out all the complexities of real life.  This is a mutant utopia, scripted with gratuitous drama and broad music-hall comedy.  The problem is it’s all relentlessly the same: kittens have achieved maximum cuteness, blockbuster movies bust tired old blocks, and the only shock left in those “shocking finales” is a shrug.  There’s no place to go in the cyber-verse that isn’t somebody else’s sequel, prequel or reboot.  All that’s left is hours and hours and hours of looping YouTube videos, everybody “liking” everything and bum-numbing binges of “must see TV.”  Face it, folks!  We’re bored — bored to the bone — and it’s making us bitchy.

Betrayed — We may ignore it or fail to understand it, but this is still the only reality we have — and sometimes it can be nasty.  Unfortunately, when that nasty comes calling (and it always will) it’s so alien to our everybody-gets-a-rainbow existence that we think something has gone horribly wrong — and we want to know why.  Flushed with excitement at the possibility of a “real” problem, but unable to comprehend any of the nuances of it, we demand an explanation for how our society failed.  We want a  reason, and we want it yesterday.  When we don’t get it — we get angry.  We begin to see evil where it doesn’t exist, impossible plots and conspiracies, tidy theories of nefarious secrets and blame — lots and lots of blame.  Face it, folks!  We truly believe we’re being betrayed by the very institutions we’re supposed to trust.

The Killer Bs aren’t killing the most benevolent civilization in history, but they’re certainly making it unpleasant. If we could get them under control, we’d all be a lot happier.

Economics Is Hard

money

I’m a big fan of our consumer society; to me, it’s a no-brainer.  Ever since the Phoenicians discovered that people were willing to trade silver for a useless purple dye, the obscene amounts of cash produced by conspicuous consumption have propelled our world.  Today, we live in a benevolent society because we generate enough coin to pay for it.  In fact, our society is so benevolent tons of people (including me) can earn money from just bitchin’ about it!  The thing is though, since buying crap is so fundamental to our world’s well-being, one would think we’d treat the whole business with the care and consideration it deserves — but we don’t.  In fact, we go about it in such a dysfunctional fashion it’s a wonder we’re not still riding donkeys and grinding our own flour.

Let me show you what I mean:

Watch people buy clothes sometime.  Is it the right colour?  Is it the right style?  Is it too short?  Is it too long?  Is it on sale?  Do they have it across the street?  Does it come in beige?  Can I get it in tweed?  How do I wash it?  Does it match my eyes?  Does it make my ass look fat?  And this goes on for hours, sometimes days, even weeks — before we whip out the credit card.  Here’s the deal, folks: clothes are transient.  When we’re young, we outgrow them; when we’re old, we outlive them. The truth is, 90% of all the clothes we buy eventually just end up in the back of the closet, waiting for the next charity to come along.

On the other hand:

We spend a third of our life in bed, doing various activities — excuse me! — sleeping, reading, watching TV.  And how do we buy a bed?  We sit on the edge of it and maybe bounce our bums a couple of times.  Perhaps we lie down (fully clothed, flat on our back) to see how it “feels.”  Now, how the hell can you tell how a mattress “feels,” lying there like a sarcophagus?  You can’t!  Yet nobody shows up at a store with a pillow and their pjs and says, “I’d like to test-drive that blue one over in the corner.  Could you dim the lights and come by in a couple of hours and give me a shake?”  On average, before they buy it, people spend less than 8 minutes of full body contact with the most essential piece of furniture they’re ever going to own.  8 minutes?  I can’t even fall asleep in 8 minutes!

So what have we learned?  People are illogical, their buying habits are stupid, and anyone who says they understand economics is lying.

Happy Birthday, India

Everybody forgets about India.  We all know it’s there, looking like Asia’s sticking its tongue into the Indian Ocean, but generally, the world is so firmly focussed in on China that India gets a miss.

india

So why do people forget about India?

Perception.  When most Westerners think of India, they think of yoga, curry and Mohandas Gandhi.  They think of bearded mystics, bony cattle and television train journeys on the Beeb or PBS.  They think of tigers and tea, spices and flowers, and probably that chirpy voice at the other end of the tech support telephone.  While all of these things are true, none of them are 21st century India.  And boring old facts might not be as sexy as jeweled elephants and maharajahs, but they tell a better story about what’s going on in contemporary India.

It’s generally accepted that by 2025, India will surpass China and become the most populous nation in the world.  However, many experts believe that the Chinese have been fudging the numbers for years and India already has more people than the Middle Kingdom.  That’s one helluva work force!

More importantly, 50% of India’s population is under 25; 65% is under 35 and the average age on the subcontinent is somewhere around 29.  In comparison, the average age in all of China, the European Union and the USA is approximately 37.  (Japan’s is a whopping 48.)  Do the math!  While the developed world is getting older and closer to retirement, India is getting younger.

India has the largest middle-class in the world — over 250 million people — and it’s growing.  Economists say that it will double in the next ten years.  So, even though, in 2017, its economic, cultural and political power is nowhere near that of China, the European Union or the USA, with numbers this large, it soon will be.  That’s a lot of rupees, folks!

Oddly enough, even though India is not a member of the G8, it has the 7th largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world — with an average annual growth rate of 6.6%.  What does that mean?  India’s economy is actually growing as fast as China’s and more than twice as fast as the USA’s.

In all the traditional industries like metals, mining, agriculture and manufacturing, India’s production generally ranks in the top ten globally.  But, more importantly for the future, India has the second largest cultural industry in the world.  Nobody packs a bigger cultural punch that the Anglo-Americans do — but India is getting close.  Everybody knows that Bollywood has more studios, makes more movies and puts more bums in seats than Hollywood does.  However, India also ranks 2nd (behind China) in Internet use, 4th in YouTube accounts, 6th in online news views and last year (2016) passed the USA in Facebook profiles.  And the list goes on.  There are also over one billion mobile phones in India, and last year (2016) Google Play alone recorded 6.2 billion App downloads.  This is the Digital Age; information is power.

Unfortunately, despite its economic prowess, India still has some problems.

The fact is India is not a homogenous monolith.  It is the sum of some very different parts, and it’s strange to consider, but one of India’s greatest strengths is also one of its biggest problems — diversity.  It’s very difficult to get the entire subcontinent moving in the same direction at the same time — for several reasons.

There are over two thousand self-identified ethnic groups in India, and — although it’s officially frowned upon — a well-defined and seriously observed Caste system.  This makes social interaction and mobility difficult at best and, in some rural areas, practically impossible.  India is the world largest democracy, but it’s not a very dynamic one.

There might be only two official languages, Hindi and English, but (depending on who you talk to) there are at least 20 other semi-official ones.  Just to put things into perspective, there are more Bengali speakers in India than German speakers in Germany; more Telugu speakers than French speakers in France; and more Urdu speakers than Polish speakers worldwide.  Plus there are thousands of different dialects, so that, in some cases, villages 30 kilometres apart can’t understand each other.  Ideas don’t flow very freely when millions of people don’t know what millions of other people are talking about!

Furthermore, even though, India is mainly Hindu, the country has huge numbers of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and every other religion on the planet — including Jews, Baha’is and Zoroastrians.  Plus there are so many religious sects, cults and factions that experts have never even been able to agree on how many gods there are in India.  Some say (preposterous as it sounds) they could number in the hundreds of thousands.  It’s very hard for a central government to effect social change with that many deities looking over your shoulder.  Chances are good any law you want to enact is going to piss somebody off!

And all this contributes to India’s most serious problem — grinding poverty.  The average income in India is still only $1,570.00 US, and nearly 200 million people are living on less than $4.00 US a day.  And although this is changing, it’s a very slow process.

Today, is modern India’s Independence Day.  Seventy years ago, the Raj ended when Great Britain hauled down the Union Jack and went home.  In three generations, India has gone from a colony, to a developing nation, to a country on the verge of becoming a great economic power.  Not bad!

And trust me, in ten years, nobody is going to forget about India!