Welcome to the first post on this blog. In the title I said that it's the first of hopefully many - it's likely to be, but like most people, I am incredibly lazy at times so I haven't figured out if this will be a regular thing or whether I'll give up after a few weeks. Only time will tell I guess.
For those of you who don't know (which at this stage I reckon is no-one, as I've not published this stuff anywhere but facebook, and even then all I reckon I'll get is a few sympathy/boredom reads) I'm Jack, I'm 21 years old and I live in London. I'm writing this mainly out of a mix of boredom and catharsis, as I'm trying to cut back on a lot of the fun substances (alcohol) that always used to solve those problems. I'm a bit of a cult culture junkie, which is a polite way of saying a bit of a geek at times. I like my sports, mainly rugby and cricket but I'm not adverse to a bit of football. Basically I'm an average guy with a bit of time on his hands who's decided to write down his thoughts for his own amusement.
The first of these thoughts ties in with a recent re-watching of a classic cult film: Logan's run. For those of you not aware of the film, the basic premise is that in the future no one lives past the age of 30. A bit nightmarish, but it got me thinking, 'at least it'd solve one problem: old people moaning'. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that I myself am having a moan about other people moaning, the irony is not lost on me in the slightest but there's something intrinsically annoying about the way that anyone over the age of 60 feels the need to harp on about every minor fucking detail that might not go how they want it to. Kids today are out of control, the NHS is usless, the country's going to the dogs, blah blah fucking blah.
Why do we listen? Is it out of some intrinsic need to 'respect our elders'? Collective guilt that we left granny in some run down nursing home on the coast? With Remeberance Day on Friday, I'd like to think that it's because of a common held belief: we respect them because they fought in the Second World War and therefore saved the world from Hitler. Well, for the majority, that is bollocks. Why? For the simple fact that it's 2011, which means that at the minimum you'd have to be 85 now to have even been old enough to fight in WW2. The majority of the over 60 population lived after the War, in a period of (relative) comfort and advancement. Technology grew in leaps and bounds and society grew to understand racism was not OK. Broad generalisations I know, but hey ho.
It's the people who were supposedly at the forefront of this progression that seem so against it now. Society is progressing in a lot of ways, for example people are actually getting more intelligent - it's evolutionary fact. The only thing that's 'going to the dogs' is the demise of Little England views - with its curtain-twitching racism, reliance on archaic beliefs and refusal to change. However, most people - out of 'respect' or some other bullshit reason indulge the geriatric population in their beliefs. For example, an elderly member of my family expressed the view (quite seriously) that all black people were bank robbers. Whilst I reacted with shock and expressed my dislike of the remark, the rest of my family shrugged it off. 'he's old, and set in his ways' one family member said. So? we feel the need to correct a child when they do something wrong, why not someone older than us? The concept of different races and heirachies of races within human biology was proven wrong in the 1930s, so why is it wrong for me to correct someone older than me when they say something blatantly not based in fact?
There could be more on this topic in the future when I think of other things to add, but right now I can't particularly be arsed. Hope it's been a bit more structed than a rant. Stick with these posts and you never know - they might actually be a few that are one day worth reading.
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