Take a Good, Hard Look at Yourself, 2016...

We really are a remarkable species.
Man, (whether Created or Evolved) has developed some truly remarkable traits, and has put them to varied and often strange uses.
A few examples to illustrate my point, and then on to the crux of the conversation.

Man ( and I use the term as a species-identifier, not as a sexist stereotype) has become self-aware. You know, the old "I think, therefore I am", which, when you think about it (pun unavoidable), is an amazing thing in itself, but we weren't satisfied with that. We took that self-awareness and decided that we had to know where we came from. This led to Myths, religion, gods, beliefs,and eventually wars over whose god was the right one.

Man has curiosity. I don't mean the kind of curiosity that leads the cat to fall into the rubbish bin because it wants to see how the swing-lid works, but the all-encompassing curiosity that makes us want to find the smallest particle in existence, and also the very edges of a Universe so massive we can never hope to see more than a fraction of it...but we want to try anyway. It was this curiosity that made us discover every continent on our planet, find out about the inhabitants of them, and have wars with them.

Man has a need to control. Call it power,or organisation,or plain old neatness, but we like to have things in a recognizable order, with definitions and labels so everyone knows what is going on at any particular time. It is this need that caused Man to draw arbitrary lines on maps, add numbers, and call them Latitude and Longitude, so that we all knew exactly where we were at any given moment. (The kiddies reading this may not know those words, but trust me, children, your GPS don't gonna work without 'em). I know many of you thought I was going to say Borders when I mentioned lines on maps, but borders were a necessity, simply because without them there was no way to stop the killing.
Man controls the Environment, the only creature to ever do such a thing on a grand scale. I didn't say we were doing it well....

And Man has invented Time. Well, technically time has always existed, but it was Man who quantified Time, put a measure on it, and gave different measures names. Seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, lifetimes, millenia, eons. And years.
We measure the years. We mark their passing against our own lifetime, against events in the world, and we plan for the coming years, despite having no guarantee of those plans having any chance of success.

Which brings me to my reason for writing this tonight.

As I sit writing this, a year is finishing, and people are preparing to celebrate the coming of a new one. Good for them, I say, but are they celebrating in hope, in expectation, or in desperation?
I look back across 2016, and I see several landscapes.
My personal landscape looks like a battlefield, with blackened tree-trunks showing the places where forests of dreams were burned in events that roared through our lives like Chaos in a Zen garden. We were un-prepared, and I can see those of us touched by these events staggering through the wreckage. Each of us wounded, scarred, and dazed. Were it not for the steadfast friends and relatives who held us strongly, and gave us the support we needed, I do not know if we could have survived intact.

The landscape of Western Society is a teetering mess. So much has been subject to upheaval in our society, so much has been subject to powerful questions about what is Right, and what is Fair, that many basic under-pinnings of our beliefs are falling apart. Think about it. Are you as sure about some things now, compared to this time last year? We are watching our societies being put to the most severe tests since the Industrial Revolution created great wealth and great poverty, invented new jobs, yet wiped out Crafts and Skills that were centuries old.

Politically, I see questions from every level of Government, not only in Australia, but also the United States of America, and Europe. When Local Government Elections are so shambolic that the State Government institutes an Inquiry as it has in Queensland, then the fundamental structure of our voting system can be seen to be flawed.
State Government is now so volatile that massive shifts in voting have produced two successive administrations with massive majorities, and as a result, the sitting Government is so afraid of the voter that it effectively does nothing, for fear of being voted out.
Federal Government in Australia and the United States are both in a state of shock. Let's face it, with Independent Members holding  the balance of power in Australia, and the Trump Administration about to assume power in the U.S.A., the public of both nations has suddenly realised that they have just given the keys to the bus to the whining thirteen year-old because they kept saying they could drive better. "Fine!! Here, you drive if you think you can do such a good job!!"
And now the public are holding their breath and hoping we don't crash.

Morally, I see a landscape under pressure, as we question who we are as Nations, as Peoples, as Societies. Our Moral Codes are in danger of being hijacked by popular "isms" and our sense of Common Decency is in danger of being Politically manipulated into backing one Party or Another.

So.
Rather than  "Welcoming the New Year" as if we were standing at a door waiting for the arrival of a guest, I see us stumbling and falling, like a man who has been tripped-up in the middle of a race; desperately trying to maintain balance, unable to stop or slow down, because the impetus is now out of his control, and the best he can hope for is to make it to the finish line before crashing head-long into the ground, but hoping that, by some miracle, the New Year will be just beyond the finish, to catch us and save us from a bloody and ignominious end.

On that note, may I suggest that our New Year Resolutions be something like this;

Take responsibility for yourself and those who rely on you.

Don't shirk your duty to family, society or your fellow man.

Remember that many others do good things for you that you never know about...do good for others in the same way.

The ones that love you best also know the worst of you, remember to overlook their flaws as well.

You need fun in your life to balance the serious stuff. You can't ride a bike only leaning one way.

The only thing that you can do to make a difference is your best. If you do that, you can always sleep soundly.


I tucked my Grandson into bed tonight, and remembered that all we do is ultimately for the benefit or detriment of those who come after us.

 Let's try and make it a better future.

Happy New Year, Folks.