The News Show

By Roger Colins

Civilisation has gone as far backwards in morality as we have forwards in science. The very posture of pious, modern society could not make it any clearer that barbarians have higher moral standards than we do.

The cold blooded, hypnotising snake is but an amateur.

Just because millions of starving, mosquito ridden, disease infested children aren't dying on our doorstep does not mean that we aren't letting it happen.

This kind of hypocrisy could just about have been excused when we didn't know what was going on in the world. Those that would come back from war with stories beyond belief, explorers that returned from the sea with tall tales of giant sea monsters weren't likely to be believed and when I first saw a news broadcast as a child my soul quite immediately decided for certain this could be nothing other than sheer, fantasy.

My parents would not have allowed these things to take place, they wouldn't even let me be late for school. The same therefore goes for every other adult that went around telling me what to do. They'd all been entrusted with a responsibility over my life and had to live up to it, which included the news show. It too was a part of my life now. Therefore, this news show could not be telling the truth.

 
My Tablet

From there we arrive at a space age alarm clock going off at half past five. A hot shower, coffee, breakfast and smoke before horror strikes as the realisation dawns. Out of our of a collection of three hundred garments, we just can't decide what to wear and are already late for work. We stare long, just at that one collection. In the back of our head we hear 'I earned this.' Get up early every day, put on a big smile and work like a drone to pay for it. 'I deserve it.'

Hypocrisy sounds curiously similar to the Greek, Hippocrates. You've probably heard of the Hippocratic oath and may even have some notion of what it involves and yet, those that have gotten this far will still admit they don't want to hear it and those that haven't, are already watching a video of a funny cat.

Why not, here it is in full:

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art — if they desire to learn it — without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgement; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favour of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfil this path and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honoured with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

Murder

Two things happen when you kill for the first time. You'll vomit, and then you'll explore an overwhelming sensation of power. It feels good. This is not dissimilar to when you got your first pay check. Something inside you managed to count how many people died for every last penny you earned and made you feel sick. Then that cool feeling of God like power washed over you, and the feeling of sickness was forgotten.

I'm not talking about animals or fruit or an accident or self defence. I'm talking about deliberately taking a human life. One six year old girl dragged thirty kilos of copper twenty miles from a mine to an airport across a stretch of war torn land.

Her pay check is survival. She deserves to do it again until she fails to earn that pay check next time.

A five year old boy then manipulated that copper into wires in a toxic furnace halfway across the world. His pay check is a bowl of rice.

An insane, ten year old girl then puts that wire into a computer circuit on the other side of the city. Her pay check is in actual money.

That circuit is put into a computer by another, that computer is packed into a box made by another and those boxes are loaded onto trucks, trains and planes by another.

When the boxes land at their destination there are machines and robots to pick them up and move them into that shiny high street shop where a fat, peaceful, charitable, enlightened, educated, happy, well paid, insured, knowledgeable, well balanced and all around nice husband and father takes your credit card and you've got a brand new tablet. You feel like God. You feel this way because as far as this world is concerned, you are.

#hypocrisy #morality #civilisation