Something is wrong with the world

If you, like me, went through the first twenty years of your life living under the bomb and then grew your hair long and wore jackets with the sleeves pulled up in the go-go 80s because it felt so cool and liberating and we thought the world had got better, then you'll know the feeling of elation that crept under our skin as all the four digits of the calendar turned at the same time in the year 1999.

We expected a lot, thought it was a brand new world, discovered that it was our time, we were going to somehow "turn swords into ploughshares", rework the old world order, take things online where everything was friendlier, cleaner, faster, better and enter the 21st century with a blank slate in hand ready to write a brand new story.

Mired in a world where the “war against terror” is threatening every hard-fought civil liberty we’ve had, where we have managed to turn misogynism, racism and cynicism into art forms.

So, what the hell went wrong?

I’ve been asking myself the same question since planes flew into buildings and before you start arching your eyebrows and pursing your lips, this is not a rant against terrorism, the US presidency, restriction of freedoms or even the Iraq war. All of this is symptomatic. Things went wrong at a deeper level. A fundamental shift happened somewhere and we all found ourselves transported into a world where the things that mattered were not important any more.

You get that feeling?

Be honest with yourself.

I too, felt sorry, got mad, tried to rationalize it, got up went to work and thought about my next online venture. I kinda talked it up or down with friends, colleagues, went about business as usual. And yet this thing is bugging me.

Something happened that escaped us all and no one really wants to face it. On one level everything is pretty much the same as before, except our computers are now faster, our bandwidth higher and we have all had a few more seasons of 24, The Shield and Lost.

But is it really ok?

Has everything just become…what exactly?

Yep. I know you’re thinking he same thing if you’re reading this. I would really, really. Like to dismiss me too. Hell, it’s taken long enough to put this together. It’s been boiling and boiling and boiling, building up pressure and sort of lurking, a brooding thought, there behind my eyes, sometimes coming across like lens, when viewing the world and causing everything to go out of synch, just a little, so that it makes sense but not quite so.

It’s like a smile that never reaches your eyes, or words that are never meant.

This is our world and we have broken it and maybe we can no longer fix it and if this reads, right now, like I am on an acid trip it’s because it has been eating me up for so long that the only way to get it all out is to let it drip and drip and fill the page.

Am I alone in feeling all this?

Is there no one else who has felt the need to say it aloud? To make it real? To be real and ask “Why?”. Why did this happen? How can we have so much hate in us still that we enter the 21st century more divided than before, selling more weapons, manufacturing more bombs, with Africa in as much of a mess as when Biafra was making the news and I, a kid myself, used to hear about it on the radio.

Why have we not been back to the moon? Colonised the stars? Learnt all there is to know about our planet?

I wanted this to be really smart but the words have all flowed out and this is really how I feel. I have precious few answers and here, at least, I can explore.

The 21st Century has become unbound and we are the undertakers of a world that is seeing its end.

I know you think this is pessimistic. It needn’t be because each end is, as you can imagine, a beginning. Each fall sees a new rise and we have to make things work still.

So we all log online and click and program and network like mad and post articles and blogs and get involved in online business and sometimes we find ourselves lost in a world that makes more sense than the real world. But we need still to find the answers, inside as well as outside.
So, for me, this is the beginning.

Join me, if you will, give me your comments, I will respond.

I really hope I am not alone.