By Andrew Klein

I remember the 70s and 80s and what seemed to herald the arrival of a new world.

A world where humanity might at least see some common ground after the insanity of the cold war period. This was not to be.

History once again proved that as far as greed and short-sighted stupidity is concerned, some human beings just do not desire to see a change. Stupidity and greed thrive and are very alive in the 21st Century.

There will always be those that have acquired power over others by various means, fair or foul and the marketing of the self has become an art-form on a scale not seen since the days of the Roman Empire.

One can smile ruefully and read about dying Roman rulers knowing that in death they would at least become God’s. Not totally forgotten but added to a list of other Gods that would be worshipped and remembered until the fall of the Roman Empire.

It all seems too very distant and quaint now, yet Rome itself was dependent on a slave-based economy and much like many states today, the marketing of rulers played an important part in the selection of those that wore the purple mantle. At least they did not have bizarre hairpieces that appear to have a life of their own and try to trump their owners.

We have government departments for every facet of life, and sadly George Orwell in the book ‘1984‘ was so very right.

Many of these departments to the very opposite of that which is implied by the name. Of course, we do not have slave-based societies today, which would be so very politically incorrect. No, we do this differently.

We allow the exploitation of countries and their labour forces to satisfy the insatiable desire for gadgets in the west.

We have toys for everything and at the same time ensure that large numbers of people cannot read or write and would find it difficult to string a sentence together even on a good day.

We claim that all human beings are equal in theory, which ensures that this given is never questioned and inequality persists.

Let us accept the very reality that all are not equal for many reasons, from the denial of education to the deprivation of resources and provision of peace and safety.

Equality is a myth that allows us to pursue our daily activities without questioning the very suffering that goes on around us, and we assume that some consultant or expert will in due course deal with the problem.

We do not have crisis anymore, we barely read about problems and most things are reduced to the polite nu-speak expression of ‘issues’.

Well, a woman leaving her home because of violence and living in a car with maybe one or two young children is not an issue, it is a crisis.

The moment we make it an issue, it can be filed away with one of our many government departments to be dealt with in due course with a superstructure of administration that is hard to equal.

We fight wars on later created moral high grounds, but only after our ally inspects the territory to be invaded and ensures that there are resources worth controlling.

None of this happens overnight but there is a pattern in demonizing entire peoples because they live in countries most people have not visited and many rely on carefully manufactured ‘Nu-Speak TV’ messages that portray the evil does after a few years of manufactured movies that make the use of stereotypes so very easy.

Labels are the lazy man’s way of approaching the world and its complexity. We excel at labels, labels applied to others and their activities so that they can be easily filed into cranial areas without little thought as to relevance and long-term impact.

We know that we have been misled by our elected leaders but choose to do little about it. The atmosphere of fear has been marketed so well that being critical of the hamsters turning the very wheels of government might attract the attention of those that are paid to guard the hamsters.

Of course, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are far too busy to worry about the small member of a community that has an opinion being far too busy trying to comply with governmental directives looking for one enemy or another and dealing with crime in ways that are still as counterproductive as they have always been.

Governments abrogate their duties to govern and sell those very duties of departments to private enterprise. Duties for profit – an immoral duty at best cloaked with the credibility of sold offices and titles.

Maybe we should be running competitions between the private enterprise/ government service suppliers to see who is the most effective.

Why not make us all shareholders in these sold off public utilities, that way we can vote for the most ethical and effective governance rather than relying upon decisions made behind closed doors by closed minds and those lobbied into compliance.