Do we need a (little) war?
Now before we start, I must make it clear that this is not here to belittle the very real problems of depression and anxiety in our world. Medically diagnosed mental health issues are a serious issue and a totally different thing from what I am about to discuss (I have to clarify that before the deluge of complaints hits my inbox on what a terrible person I am).
But I’m concerned that a large portion of the western world has simply gone soft. Indifferent, feeble, pathetic, apathetic... in short, downright bloody soft. Not spoilt (though that is could also be the case for several too!) – that is more a financially based thing – I mean that willpower, fortitude and stamina is becoming increasingly difficult to find in a person. What happened to the backbone of the world? And why do so many people now start a sentence with a sigh?
I shall explain (before I am passive-aggressively attacked on social media)...
Recently I have encountered a plethora of people who have a total lack of resilience and a ‘glass-half-empty’ outlook. That Aussie spirit of hard yakka and ‘no worries mate’ attitude seems in steep decline. What used to be simply the Aussie (or British, or simply human) way of mucking in with a smile, now is so rare it gets heralded on Today Tonight if ever witnessed by Joe Public.
Got a headache? Must be an allergy-induced migraine. Missed the train this morning? Perfectly entitled to be obnoxious to everyone for a week. Feeling a little frustrated with the world? Straight on the Prozac. That wartime spirit that rebuilt towns and forged communities just doesn’t seem possible anymore.
When did the little things become so colossally cataclysmic? And when did attitude fundamentally change from ‘what can I put in’, to ‘what do I get out’?
Imagine if we did have a war? Food was rationed, luxury items disappear faster than a tweet, we all suddenly need to pull together to survive the hard times, voluntarily rebuilding houses or helping in hospitals, creating meals for an entire street from some spam and a few mouldy potatoes without complaint... many nowadays would crumble within hours, if they got involved at all.
And it got me thinking, have we as parents inadvertently made our kids soft? Have we protected them to such an extent that when they encounter something difficult, they don’t know what to do? Have we provided so much for them that they have no idea what it means to go without? If a bomb dropped on the street, would they be the hero rescuing trapped families and stockpiling tins of peas for the neighbourhood, or would they be too busy frantically trying to update their facebook status to ‘AFK bombed’?
So maybe we need a war (just a little one), a neighbourhood disaster, or at least a local crisis, anything that will show people’s true colours. Something that would (hopefully) invoke the reflex response to help others, to rejoin the community, to stand up and fight, to put a bit of effort into life, and still sing an upbeat song at the end of it (or maybe I’ve just been watching too many black and white movies).
Creating hardship and crisis for our children goes against our very core parental role of nurturer. So it could mean instead the introduction of a new subject at school of ‘Toughen The Fuck Up’. Or an alternative to the traditional fat camp (sorry, ‘fitness retreat’) we create a TTFU camp? I want to see business men cracking jokes with hairdressers whilst dragging tractor tyres through mud, or emos and lads together at last traversing rope bridges at 5am - environments where they must actually try before giving up and hoping that an app will whisk them away to an easier place.
Am I being too tough on the general public? Am I just being a cantankerous not-so-old grinch?
Or am I right to be concerned about the future tenacity and joie de vivre of the human race?
Charlie Jacobs - troublemaker and blogger for Germinal Press
Comments
On Thursday, April Apr 2011 Judith said...
“If a bomb dropped on my street, I'd capture the scenes on my phone then try and sell them to Channel 9. Are you serious? Isn't that what you'd do?”
On Thursday, April Apr 2011 Kips said...
“Oh dear, oh dear...it's true that adversity is the thing that brings out the community spirit in everyone...but war, tsunami, cyclone, biblical floods? You want to see some of this to get the 'community spirit' back? Well that might last for a few weeks or days (what's going on in Queensland now? All back to their normal Bogan selves) , then we'll all revert to type and look after number one...ourselves. And if that means living a sedentary life surrounded by cotton wool, then that's what people will do. Remember people do some very bad things in times of adversity too. But I do think we are far too protective of our children today. When was the last time your 7 year old played footie in the street and came home with muddy, scraped knees and a black eye? Never? Well it didn't do me any harm, and I've not had a day off sick from work in the last 3 years (ok-I'm tempting fate here). We never had "Epi Pens', dyslexic kids learned to deal with life and are stronger for it instead of making excuses, we played footie in the street, rode our bikes everywhere, walked to school on our own...the only people with four wheel drives were farmers, and they didn't bring their kids to school on the tractor! Christmas was still great because you had to wait all year for the toy you really wanted. We visited family every weekend, and there were no Nintendo's to prevent you having to talk to your aunts and uncles....I could go on... Jeez...you've started me ranting now...”
On Sunday, April Apr 2011 Taylor said...
“I've spent three days with family members and over half are on some medication or whinging about their shitty jobs. That's not unusual - my work buddies are the same. Kate Middleton, I betcha, is also the same (she would obviously need serious quantities of valium and untold therapy to survive that family). You're swimming against the tide Angela!”
On Tuesday, May May 2011 lj said...
“Ah, I hear you! It’s not literally about going to war (some people commenting seem to have taken the analogy too seriously), it’s about the lack of stand-up-and-fight, the lack of community spirit that exists in our world today – and why does it only seem to come to light in the event of a crisis – like the recent floods. Nowadays with social media (despite it being called an online ‘community’) the world can be a very isolating one. Our ‘friends’ on the other side of the world know whether we had a great bacon sandwich, but we have no idea if our next door neighbour is ok, or even who they are. Sadly I don’t believe it isn’t going to change, our machine of a race will always storm towards advancement, all we can do is try and inject as much humanity into our own small circles as we can :) ”
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