I must stop watching the news at night. I resolve over and over again to do just that and then tell myself - well just the headlines, well, just five minutes, and then before I know it, it's the whole sorry flood of it, on and on and on.
What kind of effing planet are we on anyway?
We have the obscenity of billionaires spending in frivolity, in lavishness, in greed with the pollution of private enormous yachts and private jets and multiple homes with millions and millions starving.
Meanwhile - (now stop here if you don't want to get depressed and move on to a sunny blog)
Lebanon: the whole economy has tanked and seniors, yes seniors, have had their pensions, their life long savings, erased and are living on the streets in poverty, depending on charity to sustain themselves. Forget any medications.
Israel and Palestine: at it again, my land, no my land, here's a bomb onto your camp, I'll teach you. And on it goes.
Sudan: well, unbelievable starvation and desperation.
Russia-Ukraine, war crimes, toddlers dead in their mothers' arms.
The oceans are dying, warmed just about to extinction. The quantity of icebergs here for the last few months is staggering. Greenland is finally green I would imagine.
Forest fires in Canada are at a record high and the polluted air has hit most of the northern and mid USA in a yellow poison along with the major cities here. Millions of hectares gone forever.
Heatwaves in the southern USA at record temperature highs.
Maternal deaths in the USA are one of the worst in the world. And the rights of women and gays eradicated by their corrupt Supreme Court. The USA desperately needs to change its entire system of democracy. I mean, seriously, Trump running again? Is this a joke? A traitor president?
It's violence everywhere. Wars between countries, wars on women.
Constant violence waged upon the only planet we have.
We are a pathetic species.
And yes, maybe I should stick this old head in the sand and go nah-nah-nah and shut off the news.
But seriously? We are on the road to extinction, at least I believe that.
You? Do you have any hope for us at all?
I just answered this with a long diatribe which agreed with everything you said and cannot remember all of it (which is probably a good thing). But I must have hit the wrong key and it disappeared. Anyway, I too want to turn off the TV and newspapers but find I just HAVE to know what's going on and continue to hope there might be a good turn to it this time.
ReplyDeleteMaybe eventually there will be one, let's hope so. But I know I'll continue to wallow in the current news events every day.
But today is the Fourth of July here and the country is (on the surface anyway) celebrating as always.
Hi Marge, it's so hard to pull away these days, I find myself crying more often than not. Dead children particularly. Everywhere. But I was saying to Daughter (who has abolished all news except local) that I feel I will lose some kind of imaginary control if I do so.
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Alberta has had hundreds of uncontrolled forest fires, floods (if all the forest and bush and brush burn, there's nothing to hold back the rivers), tornadoes, seniors on their way to the casino (you figure that one out I can't) dying in head-on bus crashes on highways, thrill seekers, families and children and immigrants celebrating their new country drowning, heat waves, snowstorms in June, and the worst mosquito invasion ever predicted for August. Emma
ReplyDeleteP.S. The Food Banks can't keep up and have opened new depots and dropped many rules to include everyone clamouring at the gates; the new starving are working people, shocked to find out their neighbours are there too. All live in four storey mortgaged homes in new neighbourhoods which will soon be vacant. Emma
DeleteThe new thrill for gang bangers is now not other gangs but people riding buses and rail transits and mothers and children in playgrounds, Ukrainian immigrants fled the havoc there. Over a dozen (ones and twos) people and children have been stabbed, some to death, by strike and run random knife attackers. Here, not not the US. I honestly have no more shock to give. Emma
DeleteHope everyone who wanted the oil industry shut down, and got their wish, is happy. Emma.
DeleteIt's all so very hard to grasp Emma, there is no stopping it, like a confluence of horror landing at our doorsteps and all are ignoring climate change (when you look at overall countries, though some are on the ball). I'm finding it harder and harder to keep it all from consuming me.
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I have never, in my 71 years, been so negative about our future. Even during the Vietnam war, when things looked so bad for those my age, I always felt we could pull through and come out okay on the other side. Now, no, I feel that we are in for some very horrible bad times ahead. Those you listed in your post, only the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI agree DKZ, I could only list so many, there are far, far more. UK is in crisis mode too and I didn't touch on the riots in France. If we weren't all fighting with each other there could be a global solution but it would have to be dramatic and immediate. I lost track (350??) of the US mass shootings so far this year. 3 a day or something. I believe we are all getting some kind of immunity to the bigger horrors. I weep for the little ones with no future.
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I hear you. I cannot watch the news. I read papers and check out news online and that is more than enough. And yes, I believe we are doomed - and taking a whole lot of other species with us.
ReplyDeleteI didn't talk about the helpless wild animals trapped in these human made conflagrations as I get far too upset, which is ironic considering all the children dying just about everywhere. There'd be no end to my tears. But like I said above, if I don't watch I'll lose control. Cue hollow laughter.
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Yes I think we are on our way to extinction. Not least because of so many people riding their hobby horse (be it veganism, rigth or left wing politics, ... ) instead of putting their energies in saving the world for all of us. We can still make it, but it is now!
ReplyDeleteI think we went beyond the point of no return about twenty years ago Charlotte. The forecasts warned us to stop the fossil fuel consumption and I actually wrote about it twenty years ago. Not anticipating at all that wars would be thrown in to the mix. But of course, I think now. Fighting for scraps. A massive culling. Inevitable.
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I cling to the only hope I can muster, and that is to have faith in young people to turn around some terrible wrongs that have happened in our lifetimes.
ReplyDeleteIt is out of the hands of our generation (and I'm only 80, and lived through the war in Vietnam!). I don't have a lot of faith in our children. I love them, but they are involved in recycling and do gooding, not world encompassing change. So, it's the grands or none.
ReplyDeleteJoanne, to be effective at all we need global co-operation and that sure ain't happening with wars on every front. I see more mass shootings today in the USA and I count that as war against innocents. War has to stop. Everywhere. Period.
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I carry hope because I must but my logical brain knows we have screwed everything irreparably. I haven't watched the news in years
ReplyDeleteI wish I could do the same Kylie. And oddly enough it's only in old age I am riveted on it. In younger years I never bothered apart from Canadian or Irish. I remember my father doing the same thing late at night. Maybe it's genetic? *smile*
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It's a dismal time for sure, but I still have hope. Children born today or in the next decades. perhaps next century, may be the ones to sort things out. I can't see much change happening in our lifetime, or what's left of it.
ReplyDeleteI believe it's far too late and we are over the edge, River. Sad to say but I am being realistic. If we can't do it neither can our children or grandchildren. And what are they left with?
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Oh I agree with you totally and many of the comments. And I hate the news (actually the way it’s presented) yet I’m drawn to it. I’m 76 and I have a very negative attitude and those who don’t are either ignorant of the state of the world, don’t care or get total misinformation from sources the chose to follow.
ReplyDeleteI think we are way past the point of return. The game is over and we are just living through the final era.
I for one, say bring it on! I’m tired of the hate, killings, corruption and the abuse of the flora and fauna.
My only hope is the far far future like several centuries, it will be one or two scenarios. 1) Man will be gone and that flora and fauna can once again flourish even with climate change that will eventually revert to the better and adaptation or 2) Some humanity will be left and survived the bad times and will finally get past our prehistoric mind of survival of the fittest and individualism and not the community and work along with all nature to have this type of thing never happen again and proceed onward into an even farther future.
Either way, it’s a win win.
Living in the process of extinction for sure Mary. All human made, all correctable at one point but far too late now. What makes me really sad is this absolutely beautiful planet which had the means to preserve itself forever was wrecked by corporate greed and out of control capitalism and not to mention ever increasing population growth in the poorer countries.
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Whoops..Mary from above…Mary
ReplyDeleteI know, the global situation looks pretty desperate, but it has looked desperate in the past and somehow things have come right. In any case there's little you and I can do about this appalling situation, only the politicians and the big corporations can put things straight. But as you've said before, no point in worrying about the things we can't control.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily worry about it Nick, but it glues itself to my brain and I find myself praising rain (no forest fires here) and being more conscious of the birds and bees around me. I don't know how long more we have but it's the following generations left with this mess that causes me distress and unbearable sadness. Maybe Nero had it right?
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Nick, your comment pretty much sums up the way I feel about it. I am 72, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s my mother often talked about believing that Revelations was coming to pass at that time. She thought the end was near then.
DeleteI also agree that there is little that we as individuals can do about any of this. I take in as much news as I can take, then I stop (after a lifetime of priding myself on being up to date on every news story).
Nina
My answer would be a resounding "NO" to your question.
ReplyDeleteIt all seems such an acceleration now e, I've never observed the world in such dire straits and I do try to avoid the news but moth to flame, etc.
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