Nanny world

Morning world

Just another day, getting warmer here, which is greatfully appreciated. Although first thing in the morning is still chilly, by about 10 it's pleasant.

The topic was arb, just dropped it in because of an incident. Without to much detail, why is it always that these people just decide that they're going to protect you. Micro manage the crap out of you, until you don't even want to live anymore, it's that dull.

Just those small irritants, you just want to say to the person sit down, shut up and mind your own bloody business.

This world is too safe, but conversely not safe enough. People die in gruesome ways daily, i noticed a more common accident lately is trucks losing cont5rol, hitting some small car and killing or maiming everyone inside. Now as horrid as it is, any solution requires a comprehensive look at the problem. Knee jerk reactions don't help, the confuse the issue.

An excellent example occurred on the Bronkhorstspruit to Bapsfontein road. Some poor kid got knocked over, no fences or anything next to the road. Rural community, no real education, and people are all over that road all the time. It was inevitable. The community got very upset about it (understandably) and decided to do something. So they cut up the road. Bunch of the ladies arrived with pick axes and made a great big hole in the road, figured that they would stop people using the road entirely.
After it became an issue, the govt put speed bumps down. Now understand please, this is a major road (despite appearances) and is busy all day every day. There are massive signboards (i have to get a pic for here) saying "Cultural Heartland" and "crime hotspot, do not stop your vehicle", both signs on the same post. So the govt puts up these speed bumps, in the middle of nowhere, where crime and hijackings are a known problem.

Knee jerk reaction.

It took several months, but the heavy traffic trampled those speed bumps to nothing. The situation has not changed, and all the trauma may as well never have been.

Addre4ssing the abominable state of the vehicles travelling that route won't help either, as the norm is a 30 year old rust bucket that is used for dirt raods, and the occassional major route (?).

Ok, maybe a little off topic, but the tragedy of a kid dying has so many reasons and implications, anywhere, anytime, you can never control it. I have 3 kids. If one was to die i know it will eat me up inside. And yes, sometimes i can try fix something that is broken. But what happens is people get emotional, and demand action now.

I know there is a lot broken in our society. It really doesn't work as well as we pretend to believe, and grudgingly accept. But any changes HAVE to start ground up, no "cosmetic" changes will ever fix anything.

We need to start from the basics of how we approach the world, with all the things we don't like, but instead of changing, we need to redirect. Education is probably the biggest single factor, but even that is a multi faceted approach, starting with parents, then community, then school, and church, and any miriad of groups (eg scouts, etc).

The only thing that you or i can do today, that is concrete, and viable, is to be nice to people. Small, basic, trivial even. But that alone starts the community, shares our common humanity, gives us a central pillar to our communal tent. Whether we like it or not, we're all in this life thing together, and while we need certain rules, for obvious reasons, the rules we're adding to our collection on a daily basis aren't working. They're just providing more base fustration, encouraging that drink, that anger, that next tragedy.

Go on ... be nice to someone today.