The Initial Post.

The Initial Post.

Most of my life I have managed to involve myself in the keeping of a log or diary, journal, whatever the name and the current one, blog, is taken from two words so it really is nothing new. Most critics of these personal and usually private commentaries on events in their immediate lives have no realistic prospect of being published and probably would not wish to be so. In many instances this would be out of concern within their immediate family circle with no desire to advertise their own minor squabbles and disagreements to a wider public.

If one has the conceit to feel that the efforts you are making and have made over a working life which has made, to all appearances no disernable impact on family, friends and working collegues,but still feel reluctant to conceed defeat. Perhaps like the character Forest Trump you merely have an odd coincidental connection with pivitol moments of history. Then again perhaps that is all you might wish for, the comforting knowledge, if that is what you seek, to know that you were there when this or that event took place and in the scheme of things, a satisfaction, even though your  presence was an apparent complete irrelevance to those events?

In my case the whole approach and essence of this blog is to try and give some idea of what I attempted to put into the main stream of cultural life. If this effort had any impact with what those people who were given access to this knowledge made use of it, and what impact I it feel may have been to the general advantage or otherwise of the general population. I concede at the outset an almost impossibly difficult assessment to make, especially with any degree of accuracy as there are far too many variables. Nevertheless the effort maybe a more constructive exercise than the premise suggests.

Cultureshock-aka- Change of Emphasis.

Cultureshock - aka - Change of Emphasis.

A very brief introduction to start this blog of mine today 20 August 2011. My choice of name for the blog derives to a degree from the book 'Future Shock,' by Alvin Toffler written before the turn of the century and forecasting to some degree the momentous social and cultural changes to hit the world in the twenty-first century. One of many interesting things he underlined was how so many of the things that came to pass in the early years of the new twentieth century had their genesis some considerable time before the turn of the century. These births, beginnings and stirrings of an intellectual fermentation in many ways seemed to concentrate toward the end of the nineteenth century, then explode with a massive vigour concentrated on the states of Europe, and the Balkans.

Naturally it depends just how on top of events the individual is as to how far they are able to predict the future and although this book and others he has written have enjoyed success within his realm of expertise few if any could have foreseen such dramatic upheavels that have been visited upon the planet in the past first decade of this new century. Perhaps the writer that stands out on the matter of prediction of the future, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, was H. G. Wells, a medical doctor before making himself well known predicting future events, often with remarkable accuracy.

Younger people, certainly those below the age of twenty or so, will in the main accept the upheaval and collapse of many of the previously held social mores of the past several decades with few misgivings. It is however to the older more stable and considered generation that the rapid changes that have taken place in the past two or three decades, give cause to wonder, worry and fret. As the political leaders of the countries of Europe get younger and younger, and the balance of the decision making gravitas becomes more vital but fragile, in volatile climates in various regions of the world.

This blog is an attempt to offer a logical and reasoned alternative to the pedestrian explanations that are rife in the media, which to a considerable degree hold a substantial understanding to my own views of the trends and happenings of the past half century, or more. Nevertheless it cannot be completely overlooked that my own impact on events on two occasions, by severe mental upheavals, the first in 1955, which later resulted in my medical discharge from the Royal Navy, after four years service, then again in late 1972. It maybe that my reasoning is at fault but as the weeks and months pass it seems I have more confidence that my offerings may have a considerable bearing on the matters in hand and influence for the future.                T: 18 : 27:
May 11 : 2012.