There is far too much self-analysis and navel-gazing going on
IF I didn’t think my own letters were good I wouldn’t ask you to publish them, and here’s another good one, but even in my vainest of moods I can see that better ones are available in your pages. One example was attributed to ‘Lysandros Lysandrou’ on 7 February and was entitled ‘Social media can be a conduit for turning a molehill into a mountain’.
I’m not sure that social media should be exclusively blamed but the rest was spot on in my view: there is far too much self analysis and navel-gazing in the world. Not just in government, but in business and amongst individuals. The quest for ironing out minor imperfections may well succeed but often leaves a bigger mess in its wake. Michael Jackson’s face. Big Pharma’s ‘side’ effects. Guernsey’s Education system. Look at the chaos and stress IT has caused and because that has now been widely recognised its being rebranded as AI which will do exactly the same except cranked up a thousand more lunatic notches.
And is Piccadilly Circus in the age of the motor car better than in the horse and cart era?
The cry ‘too much talking, not enough doing’ goes up every few minutes from some self styled ‘I’m a doer’ saviour of society or other, but how’s this for a thought: there’s too much doing and not enough being.
We call ourselves human beings, not human doings. So why don’t we ‘just be’? Whatever happened to the art of chilling? I think it’s a parent’s instinct and duty to protect its young and if I could thank my late parents for one thing above anything else it would be for convincing me from an early age that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’.
The media and so called wokeists seem to want to convey the idea that my generation (I’m 62) should be forgiven for our stereotypical attitudes because ‘they grew up in different times’. I recently heard the observation that people like me were ‘white, male, middle aged an unreconstructed’.
I’m unreconstructed am I? Thank goodness for that. The idea that just possibly members of my generation don’t need forgiving, have their heads screwed on and grew up able to cope with more adversity than the generation below because we are wiser, stronger, more rounded and therefore less in need of outside intervention, isn’t even a blip on their radar.
If we start passing laws based on the concept that allowing a person to act in a certain way or express themselves in a certain way could affect another’s mental or emotional state then society is doomed. (And heaven knows what will happen if whingeing sentient robots start roaming the planet – what another terrific contribution from Silicon Valley that is set to be). There are nearly seven billion of us on the planet, even without the cybermen. The chances of none of those choosing to take umbrage at anything any one of us says or does are microscopic. I could argue that I get traumatised by anyone who earns a corner against Leeds United, for example. Offering love and care to anyone who is upset is in our nature and if we all stayed in tribal/family small society units that would happen without State intervention.
As ever, prevention is better than cure. We should be teaching the young how not to be upset and traumatised in the first place. In that respect, my generation has let its successors down. We are not guilty as charged (see above) but we are guilty as not charged.
As Mr Lysandrou essentially said, I think, there are bigger fish to fry. We appear to be swatting the mosquitoes which are buzzing around our heads whilst ignoring the guns pointed at them.
MATT WATERMAN
Flat 2
3 Burnt Lane
St Peter Port