Do you take water for granted? Do you take electricity for granted? Chris Mullen says we do take these for granted. I do not.
Chris Mullen, former (?) British MP, was guest on a radio interview this morning. Mullen has a “we’ve never had it so good” attitude. For example, he remarked that we in the UK take water and electricity for granted — a flick of a switch and there is light; the turn of a tap and we have water straight into our house.
When I lived in a very remote part of the UK, I took none of these for granted. Lengthy power cuts were a commonplace. In addition, electricians/plumbers/builders etc were as rare as hens’ teeth. Actually, their availability or otherwise was irrelevant because it was well nigh impossible to get any electricians/plumbers/builders out to the house to carry out repairs. One therefore lived with the constant worry and fear that if anything went wrong with the house, you were pretty much stymied. Repairs? You had to be joking!!!
Now that I have moved to a more urban environment the situation has improved a little. But I still do not take water and electricity for granted. I can only “take them for granted” if I have the money to pay for them. As soon as that money runs out, the water and electricity get turned off. Old people still die of hypothermia during the winter in the UK, after all. So while the worry with respect to repairs may have been reduced, the fear of being without, the fear of having no money, is still constantly there. So no, I do NOT take water and electricity for granted.
Mullen went on to say that the provision of water and electricity was an indicator that the government was effective, was doing a good job. Bollocks. What in fact has happened is that the population has been made DEPENDENT on water and electricity “on tap”. The truth is that Third World populations who live in their environement without assistance from anyone have a confidence that is denied people in the west. Our government created dependency, creates anxiety and stress and erodes confidence. Anyone with any sense will counteract this by learning to survive in the wilderness, will spend their summer holidays backpacking and learning to manage with just whatever they can fit into a backpack.
A government is only an inspiration to affluence when such things as water CAN BE taken for granted without worry of repercussions. So any government that proposes that the people should fear the potential loss of such things is not doing its job, but rather dangerously enslaving a population to an artificial life form, the government itself.
But the point is that you now know how to loook after yourself without modern conveniences, and so you can now go back to “civilisation” and use the wster and the electricity etc confident that when/if any of it does fail, you know how to look after yourself and will not die of thirst or cold or whatever.
It’s important to understand that I am talking about confidence. There’s nothing wrong with modern conveniences SO LONG AS YOU DO NOT RELY ON THEM, so long as you do not have a dependence that causes an anxiety and stress. So when I am talking about primitive peoples being better off, I am talking about confidence, but confidence comes from being able to look after oneself under ANY circumstances.
I don’t think mortality rate is the b-all-and-end-all. Plus, which mortality rate are you talking about? Two observations: first, a quote from Blade Runner made by Tyrell to the replicant he made, replicants being artificially created humans that are superior in health and every other way to humans except for one problem — because of the threat of their superiority to humans, they have been deliberately endowed with a short life-span. Tyrell says: the light that shines twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Second, just one example from the literature of early encounters with native peoples: when some of the early settlers arrived on the coast of N America, they were amazed at how clean and healthy the natives were. conversely, the natives were shocked at how dirty and sickly the settlers were.