Good Morning, it’s April 29th and we’re
deep in lockdown. Hope you are faring
well and coping? This awful pandemic has
thrown up all sorts of questions about our relationship with the world around
us and our place in it. Whoops, a heavy
subject I know. But the world is getting
smaller, and people like me born in the middle of the last century are old
enough and ugly enough to have seen huge changes. Many good ones of course, but also some
serious worries.... did you know that in the 40 years since I made my lengthy
treks through the volcanic desert of East Africa (Walks on the Wild Side published
by eye-books.com), 60% of the wildlife on this planet has been destroyed
because of human activity (WWF stats).
Young people are inheriting a mess, and I pray that they will be up to
sorting it out. In the 1960s my
generation was deeply critical of the ones before it and the mess they'd made
with two world wars and the pollution of the industrial revolution, and we were
determined to make the world a better place.
But as we got older a lot of people seemed to forget these ideals. We produced Trump! It's so important to follow ideals.
40 years ago much of the world was a
simpler, cleaner place. Tribal East
Africa was sometimes an extremely dangerous place to be with lots of raiding
and even gangs of bandits keen to aim a spear or AK-47 at you. Yet there was also a strange kind of decency
about it. The wealthy West was happy to
look down its nose at these half naked, and sometimes starving, people and call
them 'savages'... but hold on just a minute, who are the ones who have been
ruining this planet? Not them. Time for a mirror please. We are the savages, fountain pens and
keyboards instead of spears and automatics.
So, will we all come out of this pandemic a
more responsible kinder world? I would
so much like to believe that we will, but greed and corruption are hard to
conquer. What do you think?
