When I was growing up it took weeks between the time a letter, written overseas, was being read by its reader, weeks in which the background to the letter might have changed, in the most extreme case the writer of the letter might have died. In other words the connection as to what was written and what was read was tenuous. Reading the letter the reader short-circuited the time it had taken to arrive and mentally presumed it was fresh from the pen, was in fact a realtime communication.
Today when we hit the send key on our internet connected computer a second later, or less it's half way around the world plopping into the email box, a signal that it's there inviting us to open it immediately.
The reason why I mention this is that our communication has become instant, we tumble over ourselves to be in touch, we use the video links over the internet to be at that place of a friend or a family member, arriving as an uninvited guest who from time immortal was a difficult event, disrupting us and interfering, as it did with the state of mind you were in at the time, perhaps undermining your equanimity, interfering with the plans you had made for yourself that day. In other words we have become too accessible, not only to friends but to the blow by blow conflicts which are going on outside our immediate world in the crazy world at large.
We overdose on the calamitous nature of the confrontation in Hong Kong or in Chile we are inundated with the private lives of people we will never meet, we are shocked or in some cases traumatised by the potential for harm we are doing to ourselves as a society with global warming or the dangerous that exist from others who are more powerful than ourselves which makes us feel vulnerable. Vulnerability is perhaps the most invidious form of self harm as we read of the post Brexit trading arrangements with Donald Trumps America or the sly infiltration of our security by the Chinese takeover of critical elements of our means of production like a nuclear power plant that apparently can only be afforded by the Chinese. The sense that our nationalism, based on a sense of community values could be eroded by a Chinese parent who's strictures are born of fundamentally different ethics to our own is something to give pause and reflect.
Do we need the goodies dangled in front of our eyes or are they simply baubles which a sensible upbringing would have us reject.
The political aspiration, to remain in power is converted by the clamour for our vote to offering the things not many months ago would have been unaffordable. Billions for the NHS, more billions for education, pensions, infrastructure, mental health the list goes on and on.
Does this immediacy of presentation, the swift replacement of one thing with another dull or brains in this card shuffling trick "now you see it now you don't". The media flood us with figures and few facts. The people we used to rely on to call out the charlatan are silent or at least muffled beneath the noise.
Our brains which relied on the news, many months out of date from a friend far away can now not rely on the news given in a press conference a minute or two ago. We are trapped in a welter of misinformation and false news, we are asked our opinion and our vote built upon the quicksand of speculation and lies. We are asked to continue, as we did in the past, relying on the maturity of events which proceeded slowly and grew in your mind as a course of action to approve or disapprove but one in which there was enough evidence to make a decision.
In this political fairground where the clown and the juggler hold sway, where the trapeze artist risks their life on a new death defying act safe but in the knowledge that the safety net will protect them if things go wrong we are now privy to an act under which no safety net has been placed and the stars of the show haven't yet practiced how to proceed with their act.
Alice was asked the riddle by the Mad Hatter, "why is the raven like a writing desk" Alice gives up trying to figure it out and the Hatter admits "I haven't the slightest idea".
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