The Ides of April.

The Ides Of April.

Dreaming up an appropriate title to each entry is becoming something of a challenge. I had thought of : To be or Not to be, or To shut up. But as I am not paranoid enough to align myself with Julius Caesar, or have any suicidal tendencies left. It is up to others if they can find a laugh or merely a smile in this entry. Almost four decades ago I entrusted others with what I thought was far too powerful to keep to myself and essential that within my limited powers I would place it with various others who might have the wit and ability to profit from the contents.

Whether or not this has been the case, or as some might observe, I have merely wasted my time in all those years? I might ask the question: is the jury still out? When I came up with my alternative scenario to the destructive, Lemming like, existence generated by a massive competitive urge to get what you could, when you could, while you could. This encompassed not merely the capitalist approach to society, but socialist, fascist, and communist organisations, and despite various excuses to the contrary, religious groups, and those who drive the mechanisms, while crying into their beer.

Baroness Thatcher, once pronounced that there was no such thing as society. I vaguely remember thinking how wrong she was, [ she once labelled me a lunatic, well everyone is entitled to their opinion. ] I also remember there was a good deal of debate at the time as to exactly what she meant by society in the sense she voiced the opinion. In one sense she was both right and wrong. In the sense that the whole of population; men,women and children of various ages, even down to youngest babies are driven by one and one main over riding motivation. To survive.

In fact everything in the world that has what we call life has as its prime motivation the urge to survive. This could be called Rule One. From that point onwards we have to build the structure of life. At what point does the rapidly growing complexity of life and the need to progress from naked, winner takes all barbarism, to a tolerable self discipline and then civilisation? It is quite evident to my eyes that the steady progress we had made up until the early seventies in this country, from the exhaustion of the second world war, toward a progressive and admired civilised country, with a society that could work as a cohesive unit was well on its way to being established.

Now slowly folks are beginning to wonder just where all this rapid change is going and how, if possible a brake or two can be applied?

It is beginning to appear to me, very much, as though I have dug myself into a pit of unfettered responsibility about what happened next? Or have I a Get Out? Everyone else is blaming everyone but me; the medics, the politicians, the city whiz kids, the bankers, planners, advertisers, marketeers, scientists, technologists and engineers. Naturally they all played a part, without their efforts would we have got into anywhere near the mess we are in today? Of course not but the real point is : would we have got into the mess we are in today without my help? Whether you think the answer is yes or no, it allows me to take a breather to consider my next step in suggesting an answer to this conundrum of life as we know it Jim.