Around midnight

12-12

A bit of pleasing symmetry in what has been a pretty uneven year. Calling it uneven is being pretty British of course, when it has been wretched and frustrating for the most part. I should probably embrace being Indian and a Bengali and complain loud and proud. I do terribly want to do that. We must search for catharsis wherever we might find it. As long as we don’t end up passing on the pain to others, which too many people are doing these days, we are all entitled to find ways to be happy. So where were we? Still in 2016 obviously, still mired in the things we did wrong in 2015 and managing to find ways to screw up even more. I keep on harping on the same things, in my head alone, which is most considerate of me, but oh my, haven’t we become more self-absorbed, short-termist and dogmatic than ever before. I keep reading, of people and in places I admire (which means I read them and which also basically meet my slight leftist remit), that we must keep faith in humankind and that ultimate goodness will finally win out. I don’t believe them much anymore.

It’s been such a weird year. Quitting jobs, with the new job even meeting the expectations I had of it. But it all remains extremely unsatisfying. As I have written before, I am gradually coming not to expect any great happiness from any job I do or hold. It’s something necessary in the obvious sense that I need to earn to spend and there are societal pressures, so as to say, that it’s taken to be odd if you don’t earn at least 80% of what an average peer earns. A mild case of always being compared with leading to a fear of coming out worse in that comparison then is ingrained in your psyche I think. It starts pretty early and then you are conditioned to behave in a certain manner and be a certain way so as to not be considered a “loser”. Some people would, quite reasonably, say what is wrong with that? Isn’t competition healthy and interesting? Well yes and no would be my answer. I like competitions. I like fighting for some things. But, as well, there are certain things I really couldn’t give 2 figs about and I don’t want to be fighting over every silly thing (things that I consider silly, the list is pretty long actually). So that’s my whine really. As it always is. Is it so hard to understand that I don’t want to really have the nicest things? As Gordon Sumner well sang about the progressive leftist collective, “we are spirits in the material world” (I think that a version appears in an Ace Ventura movie as well). The things I really like are the things I have – books and songs and movies and art mostly. Spending money won’t give me talent or give me time – and the rest of things are quite not so fun. What about charity you say, clutching the shiny poster on a glossy sheet of a cherubic boy/girl with a so-so sweet smile? I say, I would rather teach a boy/girl than give money to a charity. And let’s admit it, nobody really wants to earn money to spend on charity (I know what I did there - made a straw man argument – well I just wanted to check if I could).

You know it’s a weird year when the government kind of reneges on its basic fiduciary promise. There are arguments on either side but at the very least it was an omnishambles in terms of execution (HT). There seems to be a short-sightedness among the sort of people you’d really expect to know better that is troubling. Everything reduced to catchphrases and easily parsed jargon, fed in easily consumable soundbytes and tri-colour syrup. We don’t have a political alternative at all and there is a trenchant feeling of anti-intellectualism that is almost despairing. We are blithely proud to be rude and crass, naked ambition and proud superficiality. You know that we are in for a tough time when the TIME man of the year is a reality show character (I couldn’t find a better word) and a failed businessman who shall get his small hands on the baddest nuclear  arsenal in February next year. This was a year which kind of finally proved the ubiquity of social media. I grow more and more distrustful of news; of outlets with always have an agenda to peddle. I loved the Guardian (and I probably still do), but I feel that there is an inherent bias in any news agency that has a political mooring (however far adrift it might have floated). I have a visceral reaction to anything that offends my religious, political, national and racial prejudices – and I realize that I definitely have my own prejudices and who is to say that it is I and my kind who deserve better judgment and faith. That leads me to dissociate from contrarian viewpoints, trying to preserve my own little bubble of low twenties temperature and easy muzak. I block the people (friends on social sites) who really like their tasseled sneakers and the occasional bursts of harmless jingoism. Keeps things polite and keeps me disconnected from a reality that I often don’t understand, definitely can’t shape and sometimes feel that I don’t belong to.