Mutterings On Life
I lay in bed late last night, tangled in the sheets and unable to get to sleep because by the time I got comfortable I was wide awake again. I suddenly decided, “screw it, I’ll stay up”. After spending the next three minutes figuring out how to get out of the all encompassing cocoon that was my bed sheet I was back out in the lounge room. After flicking through the channels and deciding that no, I didn’t really wish to buy the FlavorWave Oven ™, even though Mr. T was trying his hardest to sell it to me I realised that it was going to be a long night.
MIDNIGHT: I decided at about ten to twelve that it was going to be a long boring night if I didn’t do something fun. Most sane people would have simply jumped on the nearest computer and watched pointless, yet strangely compelling videos on YouTube. I decided to spend the next six hours fixing the worlds problems. So I set down a few rules.
1) Only one hour per issue, starting at midnight and finishing at six a.m.
2) No research, I must solve the problems using only my own knowledge of the issue.
3) Each issue must be explored openly and NOT from my own left leaning biased interpretations.
So with these rules in place I sat down and started.
12 AM – ISSUE ONE: GLOBAL POVERTY
I was really hungry so after fixing myself some toast and orange juice poverty seemed the logical place to start. We all know from reliable sources (namely Bono) that poverty is a real issue in the world and one that I don’t know much about. I do know that thanks to charities, none of which I can name from memory, one, maybe two children are saved per donation. A few more donations and suddenly a village has a well and an infrastructure and a school. A whole Oprah and everybody in the village gets a new car. This led me to the conclusion that thirty dollars a month wasn’t that much for what we take for basic amenities. In fact I did the math. I spend $15 on lunch at TAFE. Therefore, if I pack my lunch I might save $10 (factoring in the cost of the materials, bread, cheese etc) in four weeks (one month) I’d have $40 dollars. If five others did this then that’s $200 a month. That’s a well in a few months. That’s food for an entire village. In fact I might actually start doing this because after a few more quick sums I realised that in one year I’d send $480 to somebody who needs it more than me. If those five other people kept it up also then we’d send a whopping $2400. Five people in one year saving ten dollars a week would send over two grand not to an African, but to a Human Being, one who will die without it.
Well, that took half an hour, and now I’m a bit depressed so to cheer myself up I decide to try my hand at storming the beaches of Normandy on the Playstation. After single-handedly winning WW2 by pistol-whipping Hitler it’s almost one am.
1 AM – ISSUE TWO: WAR
I’m neither soldier, general nor politician. I do not know, nor hopefully ever will know true conditions on the frontline of a battle. Hollywood tries to show me, books by former soldiers try to explain it, but nothing will prepare you for the sight of your best mate stepping on a landmine and in the blink of an eye ceasing to exist. Hip Hop band ‘The Herd’ sums it up best in their remake of protest song ‘I was only 19’.
“You see the ANZAC legend neglected to mention: the mud, the sweat, the tears, the blood, the tension, dads recollection beyond comprehension, didn’t seem quite real ‘till we were sent in”
But what can we do to put an end to war? This one had me stumped. Many people have come up with various theories, ranging from the implementation of a ‘One World Government’ to a simple statement of “It can’t be done”. I’m sitting here and ten minutes have passed since I last typed something. I don’t have an answer. No matter how hard I wrack my brains I can’t find a solution to war. Even if say, the Dutch eradicated all other forms of human life so only the Dutch people of a certain mindset existed how long would it be before a disagreement on how to run the Dutch erupted. How long until a group of Dutch broke away to form their own Dutch Country. How long until conflicting interests sparked these two countries to war? With time running out I’m afraid that there is no solution to war. The best we can do is try lessening the impact on civilians.
Well, it’s a few minutes to two so I’ve got just enough time to dash to the loo, trip over the cat and get another glass of orange juice.
2 AM – ISSUE THREE: THE ENVIRONMENT
Halfway there. Its hard to get motivated to write something at two am. The environment is an easy one so I’ll get it out of the way and drink a gallon of coffee. Unlike war, which is never going to cease, the environment is a simple fix. All the governments need to stand up, take a hit to the wallet and act very quickly. Shut down coal mines, speed up the production of hybrid cars, offer money to people who trade in petrol cars for electric or hydrogen ones, start investing in clean energy and stop our over-reliance on oil. We in the last century have made it to the moon and back, several times, we have built super highways and computers and cars and sky scrapers and now we have filled ourselves with a dangerous arrogance that leads us to think that we actually control the planet. Trust me, we don’t. We are simply another species. And like every other species we live in danger of extinction. Of course the percentage chance of us going extinct is less than half of half a percent but still there is a chance. We have all seen the terrifying wrath of Mother Nature in the past years. The recent bushfires that saw entire towns destroyed. Hurricane Katrina which saw an entire city flooded, droughts in the Saharan regions which may see the phenomenon of creeping sands, where the desert expands and engulfs all in its path. Closer to home rising sea levels which may see the end of entire cultures in the Pacific. Maybe we can’t stop this from happening and worsening, but who are we if we don’t try? Carpool, waste less, recycle more, use public transport, Get solar panels and then even if the world does still go to shit you can say “oh well, at least I tried.”
That took up most of the time allocated. I look out the window. It’s frosted over. I’m momentarily startled by the person standing there peeping in until I realise its just my reflection. Behind me the clock we have which does a different bird call for every hour starts chirping. It’s a Blue Jay this time.
3 AM - ISSUE FOUR: TERRORISM
On September 11, 2001 the world changed. Suddenly a war, which until then was confined to the Middle East, spilled across the borders into the safe little manicured lawns of middle-income suburbia. We all remember the tragic scenes that greeted us when we woke from our slumber and turned on the morning news. We all remember that creeping fear that started at your lower back and spread up to your head. That cold tingle which pricked all the hair on your neck. “How?” we asked. “How did they hit us so hard? We are the WEST for crying out loud. They’re just opium growers and goat herders… aren’t they?”
Then the shock turned to sadness, then the sadness to anger and when all the angry words were said and you were left cold and empty the sadness returned. Questions were asked, Why? How? Who? And then the anger returned. Bush fooled us all into Iraq, we didn’t learn from earlier mistakes and simply moved all our stuff from Saigon to Bagdad. In the first half hour of the bombing of Bagdad American cruise missiles killed more civilians than 9/11. The bombing lasted all night. At the time I was 11 and didn’t understand. Now I think I have a basic comprehension of why this happened. America’s foreign policy has seen it make more enemies than friends. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan America supplied Taliban fighters with guns and rockets. American CIA agents trained them up to be perfect little killing machines. September 11 was Extremist Islam’s way of saying, “We are here, and we are willing to fight. Thank you for training us. Thank you for supplying us. Now we’re going to destroy all you stupid, ignorant and totally worthless infidels”. Al Qaeda didn’t have access to multi-million dollar cruise missiles, so they improvised, with an airplane. That improvisation makes them an almost impossible enemy to fight. What is a soldier to do when a teddy bear on the side of the road explodes, killing countless people? Or when a simple ‘goat herder’ blows himself up. In Northern Ireland the IRA used to hide a bomb under the bomb. The first bomb was connected to the second so when it was defused the second bomb exploded.
When a police car accidentally drove into funeral procession for a dead IRA man the officers were dragged out of the car and the circling news helicopter broadcast live to the people horrifying images of two IRA men emerging from the crowd, blindfolding the two men and shooting them in the head. The gunmen disappeared back into the crowd and were never apprehended. What does all this tell us about terrorist organizations. Ultimately, whilst ever a terrorist organization has the support of the people, as Al Qaeda did in Afghanistan, as the IRA had in Northern Ireland they will be unbeatable. The only way to win the war against terrorism is to win the support of the Muslim world. Win the people over and the terrorists have no recruits.
Getting tired now. I’m making more and more mistakes. Little things like misspellings and pushing the wrong key. It leads to sentences like: The onlty way to win to war on terorism is to win over the pwople.
4 AM – ISSUE FIVE: THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
The economy appears to be broken. Just an observation. We owe a lot of money to people who owe a lot of money to other people. As much as I’d like to take the credit for the solution to this issue the answer comes from The Fitz Files last week.
“There is a small French village. A Russian millionaire comes and decides to check out the hotel. He puts down the hundred dollar deposit and goes to check out the room. The hotel owner rushes off and pays the local chef the hundred dollars he owes him. The chef runs off to the wholesaler and pays the wholesaler the hundred dollars he owes him, the wholesaler runs off and pays the farmer the hundred dollars he owes him, the farmer runs to the hotel owner to pay him the hundred dollars he owes him. The Russian millionaire comes back down, decides he doesn’t like the room, takes his hundred dollars back and leaves. During his brief stay nobody made any money, but everybody paid off their debts.”
And there you have it, the solution to the global economic crisis. But seeing as that wasn’t MY solution I figure I had better come up with something myself. It’s late and my mind is apparently hibernating so this is the best I could come up with:
“There is a small American town. It owes a lot of people a lot of money and knows it can’t pay it off. It decides to invade the nearest town and take their stuff and pawn it off. It realises that this war business makes it a lot of money so it invades the next nearest town. Suddenly over in Europe a tyrant emerges and conquers half the world. American Town sees this as an opportunity and saves the world, making billions in defence contracts as it does so.”
So there you go. If America can enter another world war and make as much money as it did last time it can lend us money to pay off our other debts. Think of it as getting a credit card to pay off the credit card. Actually no, that’s a really bad idea, go with FitzSimons one.
One last hour. After a toilet break I sit back down and stare at the computer. Dad wakes up and walks out. The conversation goes something like this.
DAD: What the hell?
ME: Can’t sleep, solving the worlds problems.
DAD: What the hell?
5 AM – ISSUE SIX: RIGHT TO LIFE
This was hard. It was a toss up between Right To Life and The Global Arms Trade (guns, not… oh never mind). I briefly considered tacking on an extra hour and doing both but the rules were quite clear. In hindsight I could have just changed the rules but at five in the morning it just makes sense not to.
Right to Life is a very touchy subject. One the one side you have Pro Lifers who think that abortion, stem cell research and fiddling with pieces of people is a cruel, inhumane and ultimately evil act as it constitutes murder. In the Blue Corner we have doctors and scientists and umm…. Anti Lifers? They believe that by using foetuses for experiments they may well cure cancer or some other miraculous feat. Well what is my grand solution? Do we prevent women from having abortions as it may make them more sexually active knowing they have a ‘parachute’? Do we allow abortions? Do we allow stem cell research or not? Most people base their convictions on a religious stance, or lack of one. Christians state that we are killing babies, destroying their souls and condemning ourselves to hell. Scientists say that by stopping this research due to religious beliefs is stupid and may cost lives. The scientists so far are closer to the mark. There have been well over twenty and probably a lot more killings. There was that guy who placed a nail bomb outside an abortion clinic. He killed a doctor and two pregnant ladies. The nails were so destructive DNA testing was required to make an identification. In fact, I can’t seem to recall a single Pro Lifer getting murdered. Not one. So maybe the solution is to let the women decide. In America it plainly states that Church and State must be kept separate so the Pro Lifers arguments simple cannot be used to justify legislation. They claim they are a Christian nation but for how much longer (here comes my favourite statistic ever): If current religious trends continue, by 2020 America will be an Islamic nation. Second place will go to Buddhism, third place to Christianity and Fourth place, surprisingly, to neo-pagan religion Wicca, which is doubling its numbers every year and a half. Therefore the solution is to let the individuals decide on abortion, because America is not as Christian as it likes to believe. If you are religious don’t get an abortion. But the option is there. As for stem cell research and foetus experiments - Stem Cell is fine, because it can be taken from living tissue. There is no issue there. The foetus argument is stupid because, whilst yes it may one day it may be a person until it is in the later stages of pregnancy it isn’t a person. It is a small amorphous blob of tissue. Simple as that. Until several months in it has no awareness or thought process or anything. It simply isn’t alive. And preventing it from living is no more selfish than executing a person. A person is a person, and a foetus is not.
As I typed this a strange thing happened. The kitchen grew brighter. The sun slowly rose. I made it through the night. I solved the worlds problems.
6 AM – THE END
I learned a lot during the night. A lot about myself and my own personal views, a lot about the world I’m living in and a lot about the night. Daylight is open and sociable, but night brings down the black blanket, which gives you the privacy needed to spend six hours solving the world’s problems. Its only after I finish that I realise how much ground there is to cover. How many more issues need solving. I didn’t get the chance to look at the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the plight of the Chinese citizens, the rise of New Russia, the destruction of the Amazon. It’s with a heavy heart I begin to realise there is going to be a few sleepless nights ahead of me.
Till next time
Au Revoir
