Oh, honey honey!

When The Archies hit number one in the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1969 they sang, “You are my candy girl, and you've got me wanting you.” Oh, those far away days of innocence and youth and a little of what you fancy. But we got greedy. We wanted much more of what we fancied and cheered on by the marketing giants what we fancied was being carefully moulded and refined behind the scenes so that we would yearn for the instruments of our own destruction.

A survey announced yesterday claimed that two-thirds of British people felt they were living their own Groundhog day, doomed to repeat the same old routines without fulfillment forever and ever. This is what you get when you tell lumbering animals that they are better than they really are; that they have a higher purpose. But just as – from our perspective – a pig’s life is to eat and eat, grow fat quickly and then become bacon, the purpose of the average human in the west is to consume, to fuel the machine and then in turn be consumed by it

All the inspirational, aspirational lifestyle advertising and sloganizing has but one aim; whether it is a political party, a car manufacturer or a purveyor of breakfast cereal, the message is simple: buy what we are selling and you will become a better person. This groundhog day phenomenon is simply realisation setting in. Or, rather realisation not setting in, by which I mean that despite the simple truth that mankind is just another animal, its individuals truly want to believe they are better.

Not so many generations ago just surviving from one year to the next was a celebration. Easter was a collective sigh of relief for having made it through the winter and after the long, dull nights it was time to redouble efforts to grow a bigger crop for next year. Groundhog day, involving actually waking up tomorrow and doing it all again, was almost a bonus. Those few individuals who broke out of the mould and became leaders and artists and entrepreneurs were – and are – very much the exception.

And if you need any more convincing that your monotonous life really is all that you deserve, just look at what your actions produce. But it’s still not enough, is it? You need somebody else to somehow alter the consequences of your decisions. You want to eat too much sugar and not get fat. You want to spend all your money but still have a healthy bank balance. You want to vote Labour and not remain poor. You want to vote Conservative and not have to compete. In short you want to complain about Groundhog Day when you’re not prepared to step out of it. 

You want to change your life? Well it’s not up to others; don’t listen to them. You need to stop complaining about how other people are holding you back. You climb break out of your rut and re-shape your life. You need to get up off your arse and start grafting. You’re not going to get the Coca-Cola lifestyle and still keep your gym body unless you’re prepared to give something. If you really want to reduce your glucose intake you shouldn't have to wait for government to tax you into doing it. It might actually come easy; it’s more likely to be hard, but it’s not going to happen at all unless you 'just do it'. Or did you want me to sugar-coat that?