I see a lot of comments about the sleeping masses, and great anger and bitterness about people who do nothing and allow the appalling situation we are in in this country to continue and many, of course, vote for it.
I’ve had my moments and battles with this, so called, ‘apathy’, it is undeniably an insidious concern and yet, I suggest, one that must be internally fought because it only leads to and feeds hopelessness and despair. We have already lost too many to suicide, not to mention the deaths procured by government policy.
If anyone is motivated to take any form of protest action, say, against the privatisation of our NHS, then loses motivation because of the perceived lack of protest and/or support from others, does that not call into question the motivation of the individual rather than the collective? If something is worth doing, and worth doing because of a deep personal sense of care and concern, how much does it, or should it, matter whether the amorphous ‘many’ do the same?
The public in all its multiplicity is not my enemy unless I make it so. If people will not wake up, in what way is that my problem other than when it becomes a wall against which I find myself continuously banging my own head?
If I beat my head against a wall, who gets hurt? Blaming and shaming is what Tories do, it neither inspires nor draws anyone to a cause, it does the exact opposite, it is counter intuitive and serves only our real and present enemies who use divisiveness as an ideological weapon.
In the four and a half years I spent writing a letter a day to number 10 very few letters reached a thousand shares, a 1000 shares would be 0.0016% of the population of Britain. Typically, a letter might be shared by 100 or so people, that’s 0.00016% of the population. I stopped writing the letters, not because I despaired of the lack of response, but because I was exhausted, yet the desire to write on matters of deep concern to me was in no way diminished and is alive and well to this day.
I think of publishing a piece of writing like releasing a bird from a cage. Whether it actually takes wing and flies is beyond my control, I’ve done my bit and opened the door, what happens then has nothing to do with me and is beyond my power to dictate. Of course it is gratifying if something I write gets shared, just as it is gratifying if I share someone else’s work and it gets shared. It is part of the process of creativity that we hope what we produce is meaningful and worth sharing. I suppose if nothing I ever did got a single share, I would have to conclude that I am writing psycho-dribble and have to face up to the reality that writing is not something I am any good at, unless it is purely for my own satisfaction and amusement, in which case it would be perfectly reasonable to carry on.
In fact, my little birds have flown across the world, not in a big way, as in the New York Times best seller list, but in a very small but entirely gratifying way, not least because my letters were about life in Britain and my very real concerns for what is happening here. To discover that something I’d written resonated with someone in Australia enough that they chose to share it, is definitely a ‘wow’, pleasing, moment, to which I can only say, ‘thank you’. Did the earth move in Australia in response? No.
I had more than a few online responses telling me that my letters were a waste of time and likely consigned to the bin unread and that David Cameron probably never read one of them. No, he probably didn’t, but that was not why I wrote them. The point was that I could not be silent in the face of the appalling lies and abuse being heaped on us by the worst government in UK history. It was entirely appropriate to direct them at Cameron, rather than my neighbours dog, but my writing them was in no way contingent on receiving a reply, and, in fact, such was Cameron’s towering arrogance and malicious ill will towards ordinary people, that I would have been very surprised to receive a personal response from him, let alone an honest one.
Do I want people to be aware of what is going on? Of course I do. Does it matter to me that vast numbers of people don’t want to know or, indeed, vote for the abuse that is being heaped on their own heads by a government which has nothing but ill will towards them? Oh yes! Can I change them or demand they change? No. But come the day, when the itch for change awakens and when the courage to seek information and to face the many obstacles placed in our way by those in power which frustrate and beat us down, I hope that enough information is out there to help people take those first steps towards liberating thought and personal freedom from oppression and if I can contribute towards that in some small way, I will do it to the best of my ability.
I will not berate anyone for not waking up sooner and nor will I call anyone a sheeple thus driving them further away on a tide of rejection. Waking up is a very fragile process, full of doubt and uncertainty. I know because I’ve done it and it is painful. The waking up of an individuals consciousness is a truly awesome thing, worthy of praise and admiration at every step of the way. No one other than a brute calls a child a fool for not walking, and no child was ever helped to walk by being called useless for falling over or not yet standing up. Consciousness is no different, and requires many faltering steps to achieve. An awakening mind falls on its arse many times and that is exactly the time to offer encouragement and support and that is the very least we can do.
Is there such a thing as too late? Our NHS is in desperate straits, in fact it’s very nearly gone, stolen from us by government and corporate thieves whose only consideration is its market value, and who care nothing for the life and well being of the patients they betray. Well, yes there is such a thing as too late, but that is no reason to give up and certainly no reason to heap shame on others, other than those who are orchestrating this atrocity. This is not the time to abandon care and consideration for all those who have yet to see what is going on, quite the reverse, because if there is any hope of winning a losing battle, care and consideration are our greatest weapons. The interweb is heaving with personal abuse, nothing is served by my adding to it other than defeat. I refuse to go there.
KOG. 3 March 2017
