Wishing a healthy and humane New Year.

Wishing a healthy and humane New Year. For everyone on this globe.

Would be beautiful. Unfortunately, reality is far from it. The year 2020 gave a strong example of that. So there was and is...

• The coronavirus, the cause of it, and the approach and reactions to it that raises many question marks, resistance and despair and provokes misery,
• Dutch and foreign politicians and governments that undermine the city of law, openly admit it and get support and understanding for it from all sides as well,
• companies and capitalists who do not take their responsibility and shamelessly get away with it year after year; under the guise, corporate interest and threatening with unemployment if they don't get their way. With disastrous consequences. Who are, beside that, as soon as the chickens are present, hold up their hand whenever there is money and benefits to be gained. But they get upset and are raging when there is talk of a basic income, limits to growth and help for the needy. [Because then they can no longer exploit and blackmail with employment and their means of power: threatening with {mass} resignations]. And to take that for granted as well,
• a lot of twisting and turning with truth and facts, blackmail, corruption, briberies and cover-up politics, without a cock crowing or a hen cackling at them.
  
  

With the result:

• more and more ice-cold and hot-tempered reactions. More and more people who [just like the capitalists' club: the investors in their own, family & group interest] arrogantly allow themselves to say nothing, let alone tolerate criticism, but very primitively spit their bile, and/or try to silence others manipulatively,
• more and more conformist ostriches who don't want to know anything they don't like; who play chameleonic nepotism with those with the largest number of copycats, the highest word, the most money and the most opportunistic strategy,
• more and more scapegoat-seekers who with sadistic pleasure hunting anyone who does not conform to and participate in ....,
• more and more gaslighting and dictatorial developments and habits at home and abroad.
  
  

With the result:

• more and more misunderstandings between people,
• more and more manipulations and indoctrinations in the information supply,
• increasing distinction between rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged, own and different,
• increasingly fierce struggles between people and groups who need to survive in this opportunistic world.
  
  

With the result:

• a rapidly growing number of people who have to cope with poor resources and opportunities and little or no prospects,
• refugees who have to survive in a world led by governments that are guided by an 'own interest and own people first' mentality. By people who with a lot of external appearances have not shown their inner self for years and years and later on do not feel taken seriously, but in the context of 'one hand washes the other', blaming those who have nothing to do with it, or can do about it,
• a mental, physical and cultural climate that, thanks to a policy that has been disastrously pursued for decades, is becoming increasingly devastating,
• an increasingly rapid demolition of the welfare state and conversion to a libertine 'grab what you can grab' society. A bribery society that lays the foundation for a community where people can no longer obtain their rights, because the means and possibilities to do so are increasingly lacking or being withheld. Where - as a result - more and more economic homeless people arise, because housing is deliberately made scarce and expensive and the income gap between low and high paid is constantly growing. Where bribing and being bribed is elevated to the 'Normal Foundation' of living together.
  
  

And so on and so forth.

A long list. It is [already for a long time] not pleasant anymore. The tensions in the world increase day after day. It's quite an art to stand up righteously in the midst of so much misery. The temptation is great to pretend that all this misery is not there and -just in the lockdown - to focus only on 'the nice things for the people'. To be an unremarkable remark. To remain silent. Or to say that 'the others' are bad but not you and your tiny club. As a counterbalance. For the much needed balance: Between good and evil. Us and them. Self and others.

Only, that is where the misery has just started. With not wanting to see and not knowing what is unpleasant. By downplaying that -with you and your little club- it's not so bad, that these and/or those people are nice; so ordinary, just like us. By pretending that misery is a far cry from your bed show. That it's the ones who shake you awake from your rosy Plato-State, who broach wrongs, who are the culprits....
It's of all times. How do we deal with frustrations. When things don't go the way we want them to. And/or our tiney club is wanting. Our subculture. Humankind has its history.... Evolutionary. Cultural.

Balance is good. But without falling into Platonic illusions that it's not all that bad. Without straightening out what is crooked. Without feeling power where we are powerless.
Some things we just can't control. Are beyond our reach. Sometimes for the time being. Sometimes permanently. It is up to us how we handle it. Do we intrinsically AND extrinsically hold on to human values and manners, or do we allow ourselves to get dragged into the corrupt stream of bribery in this opportunistic world? It's up to you and others.

Wishing a humane living together!
Elze