Making the best of it

Humans are very adaptable creatures - which is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, we can cope with shit situations. But we do that instead of rebelling and demanding something better.

We adapt to awful working conditions. The boss is a tyrant, the workload is impossible, our workmates are unhelpful, the pay is a pittance, but we somehow put up with it by telling ourselves it could be worse, or it won't be for long, or it's so close to home.

What we should be doing is telling the boss everything that's wrong with this crappy job and this crappy workplace, or getting the hell out, but that seems far too risky and uncertain, so we button our lip and get through the rest of the day.

We adapt to all sorts of things we should be trashing - toxic relationships, overbearing parents, useless governments, filthy hospitals. We even pride ourselves on our adaptability, "making the best of it", "looking on the bright side", "not letting things defeat us", "not making a fuss over nothing". It shows our strength of character, our resilience. It shows our down-to-earth realism.

But how different the world would look if we all flatly refused to be poor, or hungry, or jobless, or waiting endlessly for an operation. If we all stood up en masse and said "Enough. Enough of this shit. We're not taking any more. We deserve better, we deserve decent lives."

We can all imagine a better planet. John Lennon did it brilliantly. But what if we stopped imagining and just demanded it? No more fatalism, no more accepting that some are haves and some are have-nots. No more accepting that "that's the way things are." Suppose we all got up one day and said "Everything is possible. Everything can be changed." And we went out and did it?
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This is the best account of being a control freak I've ever read. Eye-opening and hilarious in equal measures.

One of those things

Yet again thousands of people are having their lives wrecked by flooding, and yet again nothing much is being done to stop more flooding misery in the future.

The Lake District and Cumbria have had the heaviest rainfall in living memory, with several towns and huge swathes of farmland under water. Houses and businesses have been swamped, families evacuated, and services like gas, electricity and water cut off.

It's a similar story across County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, where the level of Lough Erne is the highest on record, and across the Republic. Cork was under water for the first time in over 50 years.

Each time an area is flooded, everyone wrings their hands in despair, expensive repairs are needed, and insurance companies pay out millions of pounds (or euro). Sooner or later there'll be serious flooding again, but little thought is given to how it can be prevented or how householders can be protected.

There are plenty of possible solutions. People in houses could move to the upper floors. Houses could be built on stilts. River beds could be deepened. Vulnerable areas near rivers could be permanently evacuated.

But few people seem to be addressing the problem with any urgency. There's a sort of deep-rooted fatalism and stoicism, as if flooding is just one of those things, just a bit of bad luck, and all we can do is pick up the pieces and hope it doesn't happen again.

The authorities invariably say that the rainfall was exceptionally heavy, it couldn't have been predicted, the infrastructure simply couldn't cope etc. Which is all true, but it does nothing to prevent lives being regularly shattered by these calamities.

People don't pay heavy taxes just to be told that the rainfall was extraordinary, they can see that for themselves. They want some concrete help and a sense of security about the future. In short, less stiff upper lip, more elbow grease.

PS: There's an account of the aftermath in Cockermouth here. Some families have been flooded 3 times in 4 years and can no longer get insurance.