Many social philosophers and spectators enjoy making love to the idea of human progress. They rhapsodize and wax lyrical about ‘Man’s continual ascent to higher civilized values and the raising of human consciousness to peaks not yet traversed’.
Mmm…well bollocks to that I say! – And here’s why:
Ladies and gentlemen; I introduce you to the city of Bogotá in Columbia. If the mere mention of Bogotá, doesn’t cause your rectal muscles to dilate or your arterial pressure to jack up by a few notches then consider yourself thick skinned. Bogotá has formerly received the rather dubious accolade of ‘murder capital of the world’ – for this is the place where the worst excesses of man are laid bare for all to witness in blood curdling gory and splendour. Calling Bogotá a city with a ‘civil’ administration to ‘run things’ is flattering in the least, rich in the medium and a gross violation of human intelligence at the worst. Civility is not widely practiced here and the idea of someone ‘running things’ is well, a misstatement of dinosaur shit proportions.
Formerly Columbia was better known as a coffee bean growing country. Nowadays, its chief export is drugs and criminal racketeering gangs that have no qualms about ‘unburdening’ you of your life. Life has a value in Bogotá. That value is the mean sum of exactly zero. As the holder of a degree in biological sciences from a prestigious London institution, I find that hard to swallow and rather appalling. Because we humans are amazing products of evolution. Beautifully crafted with a brain that is arguably the most elegant and complex structure in the known universe. From day one we pop wide-eyed into the dazzling big wide world, soaking it all in like a sponge; colours, sounds, languages, dodgy smells, yummylicious flavours, and not so yummylicious flavours too. The world gets in through our eyes and ears. Seeps in through our skin and tongue; helping us to build a useful picture of our surroundings. All thanks to our brain. Yet, there are mindless scum in Bogotá, who would not bat an eyelid before putting a hole, the size of a golf ball, through that elegant brain of yours; depriving you of any further use for it. The damage is usually done by means of a device that discharges high speed lead projectiles. Yes a gun. And all for what? For a cigarette. Yes a single measly cigarette. Where's the sense in that?
You were carried in your mother’s womb for 9 months. She suffered to get you into the world. She suffered when you cried all night as a baby and suffered even more when your hormones went awry and you started sprouting zits and having crushes on the music teacher.
And now…now you have a hole in your brain; all because someone with an insatiable nicotine addiction, and no desire of satisfying it legally; decides to pump your head with lead and extinguish you from existence. Where’s the sense in that?
I see a problem here. And it’s pandemic. The ‘Shifta’ gangs in Somalia for example, that roam the lawless Sudanese border areas to the south, will kill you for your Nike’s. In Haiti, it’s your grocery shopping their after. In Papa New Guinea, just having life seems a good enough reason to deprive you of it. In Iraq, 500,000 people dead since the war began. Eh? How many? Let me say that again: 500,000. Nobody even flinches. Nobody cares. Nobody gives a shit. Where’s the sense in that?
There needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking. Some kind of ‘raising of consciousness’ – we can call it the ‘people are precious campaign’. Because every single life that bubbles into existence is precious. Your life is precious. My life is precious. Each and every one of us is a miracle of embryology; bundles of neurones bursting to the brim with quirkiness, weirdness and bizarreness all packaged in a waterproof skin and ready to take on the world! So take on the world! Change it. Shape it. Mould it. Awake it from its slumber. I believe it’s the value that society places on life that determines the civility of civilization. And by that yardstick we’ve still got a long way to go…
