| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
The Kids Aren't Alright
It’s not easy being a kid these days. What with the high
divorce rate, disintegrating families, bullying and violence in
the schools, drug and alcohol abuse, gangs, peer pressure, the
lack of proper role models, eating disorders such as bulimia
and anorexia, childhood obesity at the other end of the scale,
increasing rates of depression and other clinical
psychopathologies, and the decline of religion with its
resultant absence of anything to believe in -- it all adds up to a
real bummer of a childhood for altogether too many.
But as if all that wasn’t enough, one more thing can now be
added to the list of childhood horrors: global warming. (Cue
shrieking violin music from “Psycho” shower scene: Re-e-e-e-
t! Re-e-e-e-t! Re-e-e-e-t! Re-e-e-e-t!) That’s right. According
to a survey of British children between the ages of seven and
eleven, fully half are worried about it and many of them are
actually losing sleep at night.
Well, golly gee willikers! How pitiful can you get? When I
was that age the only way I was losing sleep was over things like
a bad report card or maybe worrying about how many licks I
was going to get when my dad found out I broke one of his golf
clubs.
And even though the Cold War was raging and we were all
highly cognizant of the possibility of worldwide nuclear
annihilation, I never lost any sleep over it and never heard of
any other kid who did either. Lose sleep over global warming?
Whining over such a thing back then probably would have
gotten you a thrashing for being a sniveling pansy.
But things are different nowadays and in Britain the
ultimate in scary bedtime stories might go something like this:
Once upon a time there was a pristine planet where all of
nature lived in perfect harmony and was as yet unsullied by
the rapacious depredations of that two-legged menace known
as man. But after eons and eons of such peaceful, co-
existential splendor, modern Homo sapiens made their
appearance on the Eden-like world stage after a long period of
evolution which had its humble beginnings in the primordial
sludge. It wasn’t to be long before this arrogant, greedy
creature would scar vast swathes of the planet without a care
for its other creatures or its vegetation. And now the earth is
faced with the ultimate disaster of uncontrollable climate
change, the apocalyptic consequences of which we are barely
even able to conceive, but of which we can be certain will be
devastating.
Kinda sends a chill down your spine, doesn’t it? If that’s not
enough to make the kiddies pull the sheets over their heads at
night and tremble in fear, then what is? Well, actually, maybe
an article in the UK Telegraph on Feb. 25, 2007, which featured
this headline: “Secret report: Terror threat worst since 9/11.”
The article said that the director general of MI5, the British
intelligence service, has warned that there were 200 known
networks involved in 30 terrorist plots and it is thought there
could be in excess of 2,000 British citizens involved.
What that means for the average British child, then, is that
at any moment he and/or members of his family could be blown
to kingdom come, possibly by one of his culturally diverse
neighbors whose ways he has been taught to accept without
question or hesitation. But, sure, it all makes perfect sense
that while Britain is under the threat of radical Islamic
terrorism at every moment, it raises a generation of milque-
toast moppets who quiver in fear in their beds at night over bug-
eyed predictions of a climatological cataclysm based on a
science that is absolutely notorious for its inexactness and
tendency toward gross error.
Or at least it makes sense to a commenter on the message
board for an article on this subject: “My heart goes out to ALL
the little ones of our world. They will be forced to deal with
and try to survive from what man had set into action for them!
Wake up people, this is as real as it gets!”
That’s funny. I thought the coordinated terrorist bomb
blasts that hit London’s public transport system on 7/7/05 and
killed and injured hundreds seemed a tad more real. Or how
about those skyscrapers full of thousands of innocent people
crashing to the ground in Manhattan? They’re the kinds of
things that strike me as altogether more palpable than what’s
currently got the kids tossing and turning.
But let’s say the earth really is in for a spot of fairly
significant warming. Time was when British kids -- being like
any other kids, which is to say, lighthearted, carefree and
frolicsome -- would have been thrilled at the prospect of any
improvement to the sceptre’d isle’s otherwise miserable, rainy,
chilly, weather. Looks like such trivial considerations are now
far outweighed by the imposition upon them of the West’s guilt
complex over its fabulous economic success which has led to
the current climatological emergency now faced by every living
creature on the planet.
It’s not easy being a kid these days. What with the high
divorce rate, disintegrating families, bullying and violence in
the schools, drug and alcohol abuse, gangs, peer pressure, the
lack of proper role models, eating disorders such as bulimia
and anorexia, childhood obesity at the other end of the scale,
increasing rates of depression and other clinical
psychopathologies, and the decline of religion with its
resultant absence of anything to believe in -- it all adds up to a
real bummer of a childhood for altogether too many.
But as if all that wasn’t enough, one more thing can now be
added to the list of childhood horrors: global warming. (Cue
shrieking violin music from “Psycho” shower scene: Re-e-e-e-
t! Re-e-e-e-t! Re-e-e-e-t! Re-e-e-e-t!) That’s right. According
to a survey of British children between the ages of seven and
eleven, fully half are worried about it and many of them are
actually losing sleep at night.
Well, golly gee willikers! How pitiful can you get? When I
was that age the only way I was losing sleep was over things like
a bad report card or maybe worrying about how many licks I
was going to get when my dad found out I broke one of his golf
clubs.
And even though the Cold War was raging and we were all
highly cognizant of the possibility of worldwide nuclear
annihilation, I never lost any sleep over it and never heard of
any other kid who did either. Lose sleep over global warming?
Whining over such a thing back then probably would have
gotten you a thrashing for being a sniveling pansy.
But things are different nowadays and in Britain the
ultimate in scary bedtime stories might go something like this:
Once upon a time there was a pristine planet where all of
nature lived in perfect harmony and was as yet unsullied by
the rapacious depredations of that two-legged menace known
as man. But after eons and eons of such peaceful, co-
existential splendor, modern Homo sapiens made their
appearance on the Eden-like world stage after a long period of
evolution which had its humble beginnings in the primordial
sludge. It wasn’t to be long before this arrogant, greedy
creature would scar vast swathes of the planet without a care
for its other creatures or its vegetation. And now the earth is
faced with the ultimate disaster of uncontrollable climate
change, the apocalyptic consequences of which we are barely
even able to conceive, but of which we can be certain will be
devastating.
Kinda sends a chill down your spine, doesn’t it? If that’s not
enough to make the kiddies pull the sheets over their heads at
night and tremble in fear, then what is? Well, actually, maybe
an article in the UK Telegraph on Feb. 25, 2007, which featured
this headline: “Secret report: Terror threat worst since 9/11.”
The article said that the director general of MI5, the British
intelligence service, has warned that there were 200 known
networks involved in 30 terrorist plots and it is thought there
could be in excess of 2,000 British citizens involved.
What that means for the average British child, then, is that
at any moment he and/or members of his family could be blown
to kingdom come, possibly by one of his culturally diverse
neighbors whose ways he has been taught to accept without
question or hesitation. But, sure, it all makes perfect sense
that while Britain is under the threat of radical Islamic
terrorism at every moment, it raises a generation of milque-
toast moppets who quiver in fear in their beds at night over bug-
eyed predictions of a climatological cataclysm based on a
science that is absolutely notorious for its inexactness and
tendency toward gross error.
Or at least it makes sense to a commenter on the message
board for an article on this subject: “My heart goes out to ALL
the little ones of our world. They will be forced to deal with
and try to survive from what man had set into action for them!
Wake up people, this is as real as it gets!”
That’s funny. I thought the coordinated terrorist bomb
blasts that hit London’s public transport system on 7/7/05 and
killed and injured hundreds seemed a tad more real. Or how
about those skyscrapers full of thousands of innocent people
crashing to the ground in Manhattan? They’re the kinds of
things that strike me as altogether more palpable than what’s
currently got the kids tossing and turning.
But let’s say the earth really is in for a spot of fairly
significant warming. Time was when British kids -- being like
any other kids, which is to say, lighthearted, carefree and
frolicsome -- would have been thrilled at the prospect of any
improvement to the sceptre’d isle’s otherwise miserable, rainy,
chilly, weather. Looks like such trivial considerations are now
far outweighed by the imposition upon them of the West’s guilt
complex over its fabulous economic success which has led to
the current climatological emergency now faced by every living
creature on the planet.