Safety doesn't make me happy

So I live in a safe, hygienic country that is largely full of financial opportunity, good medical care, free eduction of a reasonable standard with a relatively low crime rate and in a part of the world free of war. I'm grateful, I really am… 

But I also live in a country where a certain group of people think it's a good idea to start gas repairs in the street outside the largest secondary school in the area – on the route I, and I'm sure many others take to the station – a country where train operators are today fairly and legitimately striking over unfair employment terms set by the absurdly rich directors of a monopolising but crumbling rail operator #southernrail, where car parks are expensive and patrolled by fascistic attendants dishing out £60 fines with no leniency what so ever. I can actually park here for £6.50 but not until after 9am otherwise the lowly paid but ego inflated nit wit attendant will ruthlessly slap black and yellow striped PENALTY CHARGES on my windscreen – that look like some giant killer wasp waiting to sting me senseless. 

I live in a country locked down by traffic jams, full of fines, taxes, penalties, rules, CCTV monitoring, laws designed to 'protect' us but all they do is oppress us, a country of control, of bureaucracy that has no use other than to keep the rich rich and everyone else just has to unquestioningly put up with the daily grind of pointless nonsense. If we question it we are labelled as odd or awkward by friends and peers – and by institutions as rebellious and possibly a danger to society, a threat to the status quo. 

Has thousands of years of conflict and bloodshed taught us nothing? Or has it taught us that we'd rather pay the price for stability, peace and longevity? Democracy has indeed brought peace, but at what cost to our individual freedom? Sometimes the unpredictable excitement of living hand-to-mouth, surviving not existing and the wild freedom that would give us all, makes me ponder. 

Perhaps the real issue is after all population, as my grandfather used to say. We can't have everyone parking anywhere they fancy, eating all the wildlife and sleeping in the woods… defecating, urinating and fornicating where they please. With a population of over 64 million in the UK, 8.6 million of those in the South East of England and about the same again in London – that's 17.2 million people on my doorstep, some 'control' is surely necessary yes? Perhaps my yearning for freedom is centuries too late, in Europe anyway, and I should be looking to the new frontiers of our time. Mars anyone? 

Perhaps too my state of mind is to blame. After all it is through the filter of my brain that I am interpreting all of this. My short temper, my vitriolic critique of the world, of its people, how 'unfair' it all seems – has been with me since I can remember. Gandhi is famously reported to have said  “You must be the change you want to see in the world." I've tried, believe me. I's not the individual people anyway, (as I type this on my personal smartphone, a gentleman of Gandhi-esque appearance has just chased me down the platform to hand me my work mobile phone that I'd left on the train), individuals are fine, it's us as a collective, en masse that seem to be the problem. The larger and more complex a system, the more prone to faults it is. Look at empires, governments, companies… even groups of people deciding on dinner or colleagues deciding on an course of action, even the human body is flawed. We are not designed to work as singular individuals either, rather small groups, tribes and communities – these are the most effective forms of social human existence. But we are most definitely not designed to function as huge homogeneous collectives where one individual doesn't know the function, name or ideas of the other. 

The internet created the global village. What an oxymoron. A village that spans the entire planet is not a village. It has created even larger groups – what started as the ultimate free forum for the people is now pretty much owned and controlled by Google upon who's services we've grown increasingly dependant and who's main intent is to commercialise this wonderful medium and line their seemingly bottomless pockets). This new era of instant information and borderless coming together has helped create the global democracy, the neoliberalism that grips our planet and holds us down in a vicelike headlock, against our will. It's brought peace and lower crime rates yes but there is no wonder we aren't harming each other and stealing from our neighbours, our governments are our enemies and they are stealing from us, our money and liberty. And this new world order is doing nothing but distilling the feeling of solidarity amongst every day people. 

Times will change, as they do, again and again and again and there is little we can do other than try to stay aware and focussed and to never be complacent and to not end our days as ignorant ice-cream pigs of a system of mental and financial enslavement. Dying dumb ain't my bag Daddy-O.