Philosophical Enlightenment

In everybody's lives their comes along a juncture, good or bad, which results in a change in philosophy and possibly a change in direction. Life, normally, whether you know it or not will take that pre-determined path that leads you towards your inevitable goal, whatever that might be. You may have never even thought about this goal at any point in your life but your actions and the consequences from those actions have lead you to this point in your life. Then a certain event will transpire to transform your feelings whether it be death, the death of a close one or maybe even a near-death experience. At this point life seems to take on a whole different meaning. All of a sudden you become aware of your actions and will quietly admit to yourself that you will no longer be truly ignorant to the consequences of those actions. In addition to this, maybe not all of a sudden but possibly over a larger period of time, your life starts to change facilitated by a distinct change in philosophy. This is not the cliched moment of mental clearness where you become aware of the bigger picture but an incremental transition to a life that will not be pre-destined but will be experienced rather than be made to sit in the passenger seat.

At the same time things become much more duanting. Life before such an adverse event was much more distorted but much easier. Its that age old jealousy of the simple builder who probably reads the Sun and who is probably not the sharpest tool in the box but you feel so much jealousy because he is happy with his place in the world, he is the king of his own castle surrounded by all the things he could ever need in life. His life probably hasen't been one long happy journey but it has unwittingly or not brought him relative peace and happiness. Would he therefore be the same person if a) he was more aware of world around him and b) he had gone through a life changing event?

What im trying to push at is the that maybe it does take a life-affirming event to change your philosophical approach to life but maybe being ignorant can bring equal amounts of pleasure and pain. On one hand life would be much easier to handle but do people really want to carry on being as ignorant as some pople are?

child-like ignorance

Recently, as you may or may not have noticed, the world has somewhat belatedly turned their attentions to climate change. In what is turning out to be the biggest slap in the face yet to life-long environmentalists the climate-change agenda is finally making a belated appearence in the agenda of the evryday person, not only that but governments worldwide are taking precautionary measures to combat its own guilty concience. In addition, one can only presume that to many members of the public this passing fascination with a growing political agenda will slowly but surely fade away into its inevitible obscurity surpassed by the likes of Jordan's new perfume. I could at this point slam the very nature of consumerism and an increasingly disinterested and disengaed public but that would be too easy. Instead my increasingly perturbed mind is becoming increasingly frustrated at the news of seemingly 'ingnorant as fuck' national governments.

One might understand the nature of less-developed nations with an incling for hyper industrialisation to undervalue the very nature of climate change in their quest for economic stability. You might also say that even with China and to a lesser extent India's fragile commitment to human right's you might let them off for having a some really smokey power stations or for 'accidentally' killing dolphins to the verge of extinction. They are, wrongly or rightly, going through the same motions that us as developed nations did 150 years ago, allbeit on a much grander scale. So how do you defend the child-like antics of five of the most developed and powerful nations fighting over the future of one of earths last great wildernesses?

The arctic has suffered more than most as a result of climate change and ironically it is the continuing melting of the icecpaps in this area which has now given the opportunity to Denmark, Canada, Norway, the U.S? (Alaskans be fearful) and distressingly Russia to exploit this area for its potentially endless resources of oil and gas. In fact, a US Geological Survey estimates that a quarter of the world's undiscovered energy resources lies in Arctic areas. For me this is obscenely frustrating to a point where its alsmost upsetting.

Nations such as these shouldn't be drawn into another oil rush and drawn into territorial disputes but be putting there resources, intelligence and more importantly time together to draw up plans for the future of renewable energy, immediately. This not only stinks of aggresive imperialism but shows the rest of the world just what we as developed nations think of the climate change agenda