Them (just a little thought)

What would you say was the defining moment of a generation? For my parents, they'd probably talk about the Falklands or the Miners' strike. My grandparents would immediately say the war or the IRA, and I'd probably talk about 9/11 or Paris. It's horrible when you realise these 'moments' are all conflict-generated. They're all moments fuelled by hate. At a stretch my parents could mention the Berlin Wall, or the end of the apartheid, but what could I say. I remember where I was when Bin Laden was killed, and yes it was a great thing, but one of the biggest highlights of my generation is the death of an old coward who caused most of the other defining moments of my generation. 

You could say that these moments are just drops in the moral panic oceans, whose waters change every ten years to make way for a different tide. (Wow, ver philosophical) Another thing for society to panic about, because if we don't have panic, we don't have anything, do we? 

My mum refuses to go to big shopping centres around Christmas time because 'you don't know what will happen'. My auntie panics every time she has to get on a plane to America, not because of the fact that she's ten thousand feet in the air or because of the impossibility of flight but because, 'you don't know what will happen'. But that's just it, we don't know what's going to happen. We live in fear of something that might never happen, but all because there's a small possibility, we change the way we live our lives. And that makes them think they've won. And we can't let them think they've won. Isn't it ridiculous that I don't even have to give a name, and you know who 'they' are. They didn't even self-brand themselves, the name they brandish, the name that strikes fear into the hearts of nations, is a name we gave them.

So I'd say 2015 was a pretty shocking year as far as that goes. We all want 2016 to have as little resemblance to last year as much as possible. I mean, personally, last year was pretty shit in terms of losing a close family member but, socially, it was OK I guess. A lot of things ordinary people like us just have no power over, so whatever will be will be. And that isn't me saying that I don't care about the terrible stuff that's happened, as the stuff that's still to come. It's me saying that, as somebody who isn't a world leader or NATO operator, all I can do is know that the world will go on, with or without some people in it. So here's hoping 'some people' are the ones who don't deserve to be here, rather than the ones who do.