We, the sheeple...

I’m no monk. Whilst I like to sit in quiet contemplation of the world, my febrile mind rarely allows me the peace to devote myself entirely to the cerebral; I have to be doing, even if it’s not very much. As for anything beyond my own personal existence I’m so atheistic as to wonder whether that isn’t in itself a religion of sorts. It’s not, by the way, I’m not fanatical about it; the depth of my atheism is such that I really, really don’t care what you believe in except to be fairly certain that my solid lack of belief is far more healthy than whatever depth of delusion the faithful wade about in.

I give in to temptations, to cravings, just as you do but I’m probably better at doing without than most. It certainly seems that way, for even as I stop spending when I hit my limits and cut my cloth to suit, I inhabit a world where to exercise such self-control seems to be folly when somebody else can pick up the tab; this is a time where all you have to do to deserve a reward is to want a reward. I scoff at the professionally needy but, like I say, I’m no monk and it is almost impossible to live a life out of earshot of the clamour of our very odd society.

All around I hear and see the frantic calls to take up cudgels on behalf of some cause or other, the more obscure the issue the louder the voices. We used to be tolerant but that term has been abused and now tolerance is taken to mean bending over backwards to accommodate and assist. It’s not the same thing. Tolerance without activism is somehow not enough any more and we must now take sides with the various apologists; and there’s a growth industry all right. There are apologists for rapists, murderers, islamic fundamentalists, Roma gypsy crime gangs… apologists for the obese, the stupid, the indolent, the looter, the *insert name of favoured nasty here*.

But we don’t have to tolerate everything, why should we? Objecting to something isn’t automatically racist, or whatever other imagined bigotry label you want to apply. Finding something objectionable isn’t a crime, surely? But it’s worse than that – we are even expected to care about things that have nothing to do with us and don’t impact on our lives at all. Why can’t we just be allowed to not engage? We don’t have to be angry about everything but the current trend seems to be to create yet more laws against daring to commit the outrageous offences of not only not being tolerant enough but not actually caring enough.

This is the problem when everything is left to governments; when people are not allowed personal discretion. The more decisions are taken away from individuals the more dependent the sheeple become and sheeple never learn. “Baaah-aan it!” they cry as they demand control of the press, control of speech, control of even thought itself, imagining that this will create a world where we are free of offence. The only freedom granted by statism is the freedom from liberty.

I may not quite manage to be a monk, but I’m damned if I’m going to be a sheep.