I turned to the Guardian this morning after my Bad Hair Day yesterday, looking for inspiration but need not have bothered.
As each days passes the world becomes less attractive to me (and perhaps everyone else?) and the appeal of isolation increases.
I suppose we must be thankful that we have people with the energy and enthusiasm to do battle on climate change, to tackle child sex abuse, to best fat little dictators in North Korea. Or is Trump cuddling up to the fellow? Envious of his absolute power?
I have always envied “enthusiasm” and enjoy the occasions when I am in possession of that quality. But my enthusiasms have always been of a more private and quieter kind. If I am to be honest with myself I have never enjoyed “current affairs”.
I remember very clearly being expected to read the newspaper at an early age. At a Dickensian prep school in the seaside town of Broadstairs, the day’s papers were laid out for us in the classroom. Those who bothered to read the news fared rather better than I in the general knowledge quiz at the end of each term.
It is not that I don’t care about people and their tribulations. It is simply that I am too small and tired and weary to do much about it; even to read about it.
I don’t want to shout down my opponents in parliament or the local town council. Or parish council (which, I gather, can get every bit as nasty as its bigger cousins). I don’t want to battle, to argue with people, to push my agenda to the top of the list.
There is so much in this world that I find repugnant, distasteful, unjust, unfair. There is so much to humanity that sucks that any belief in a benign creator must surely be the mark of the deluded or the ostrich.
The world sucks and the same goes for most people in it. That is the killer argument against the existence of a deity: if there was one he would have realised his errors by now and sent a giant meteor to wipe us all out.
Come to think of it perhaps that’s what he thought about the dinosaurs?
Weltanschauung 