Big Beasts

Once, giants stalked the earth. Huge creatures with few objectives other than survival lumbered around, outcompeting the rest by simply being better. Better at finding food, better at fighting for that food and better at passing on those genes for success. The formula worked. Then the climate changed and big became less beautiful; it was the runty animals which survived the great extinction and began to rule the roost, because the bigger you are the harder you fall.

Maybe this is what is wrong with society today. In the clamour for equality, for all to be accorded the same score in life’s ninety minutes, the notion of supremacy seems to have gone missing. People don’t want to be led by egalitarians, though; they want to follow a big figure, a leader with the courage of their convictions and the stubbornness to see through to a plan of action. Take Brexit... no, really.

Instead of having the balls to weather the storms when they dither and obfuscate and frustrate progress along the decided road; instead of fulfilling the promise that was made to the voters that they would implement what the referendum decided, we get... this; this utter shambles of indecision in an attempt to avoid losing votes. This has sod-all to do with what is best for the country, for the world; it has everything to do with the trend since the great extinction of 1997 of clinging onto power not through strength, but through appeasement.

The big beasts would have cut through the mewling of the marginals and forged ahead, crashing through the undergrowth and yes, trampling on a few who got in the way, but ultimately getting the job done. Cameron threw away his opportunity to seize that initiative by quitting the second he’d worked out it might make him unpopular. May’s government, such as it is, seeks to introduce measures to prevent criticism of politicians on social media; that same social media formerly lauded as an opportunity for a new, participative, more direct democracy.

On the day that many are celebrating 100 years since Mandela’s birth why are we forever looking back? A minute’s silence here, a vigil there, a prayer for the long gone. Where are today’s political titans? Where is our Churchill, our Thatcher? And don’t even begin to think of Boris in the same league; he has bottled it on far too many occasions to have any credibility in the vanguard; he’s just another poll-gazer.

The real reason dinosaurs became extinct

Brexit may be a big deal, but really it is a more of a symptom of a far greater sickness. The west has lost its way. It has lost its will to lead. And it has decided to turn on itself in a pathetic display of first-world guilt. Instead of forging ahead, continuing mankind’s thrust towards true greatness it has decided to doubt; to allow itself to be overrun by more single-minded cultures and to pay for the ‘privilege’ of witnessing its very own extinction event. But wouldn’t it be great if now, in the modern Meghalayan Age dinosaurs once more ruled the land?