The humbug post
It is traditional at this time of year for me to grumble publically about other people’s festivities and how much I detest them. This year is, in a number of ways, being worse. The rise of foodbanks in the UK, my awareness that many people will be hungry over the festive period, and 80,000 children homeless, makes the traditional gluttony even more abhorrent than usual. While MPs claim expenses for heating their second homes, many elderly people have to choose between heating and eating.
I have a lot of politically engaged people around the world in my social networks. I’m signed up to a lot of petition sites. As a consequence on a daily basis I’m hearing about international acts of eco-vandalism and eco-suicide. Unspeakable things undertaken in the name of profit. There are so many of them. Every now and then there’s a victory for sense and compassion, but the victories seem all too small in relation to what’s wrong out there.
It could be that things have always been this awful, and, not having the internet my whole life, I didn’t know. But foodbanks are a recent thing, and it used to be that we worried about homeless children in distant lands, not as a charity issue on our own doorsteps. There’s always been some degree of injustice for the poor, but the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has never been bigger, and it keeps growing.
Quite honestly, this stuff scares me. It’s emotionally exhausting as well. Yesterday I had information coming in about how CO2 emissions from airports are calculated, and about the rise in foodbanks. We need to be talking about the transatlantic trade agreement. I started feeling like I could not cope and did not know what to say. I’m just a small voice, a little blogger writing for a few hundred people here and at ruscombe green. I send out press releases to local newspapers. In a good week maybe I get an idea in front of a few thousand people. It’s such a tiny contribution to be able to make. If I gave away everything I own, I could not begin to alleviate the short term misery in this country, much less anywhere else.
With all of that on my mind, it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for festive shopping. I do at least have the scope to shop local this year. I’m buying things from independent Stroud shops and from the market to a significant degree. It’s a lot less grim than being exposed to the endless, useless, plastic mass produced soulless tat that dominates at this time of year.
What I want for me, more than anything else, is a few days away from it all, not breaking my heart over news items and causes I can do far too little about. What I need is some belief that it is worth my while to keep going. I could do with being able to stop without feeling guilty about it. But there is so much out there needs doing. Could we just have a couple of days while the wealthy politicians stuff their faces with food and sit in their large, well heated houses and do not inflict any new forms of suffering? A break would be nice. We’ve got plenty enough awfulness to be going along with. And if any of them dare to talk about Christian values during this season, as they brutalise the poor and attack the land, please, please would the Christian deity be so good as to smite them for taking the piss.
In the meantime, I’ve just been rendered a bit weepy by warmth and kind words from people on facebook. I suspect I’m burning out. I do not believe that people working themselves to mental and physical collapse is the way to go, and I know I should apply that to me, and mostly I don’t manage that.
