I have been going to the gym twice a week and even managed 16 days without a cigarette. I started smoking again and have 3-4 roll ups a day. I suppose if I can limit myself to this, or indeed don't even want one it's a kind of improvement.
I think watching the news at the moment fuels this anxiety feeling. It's difficult not to feel awful about Syria. I just can't believe how bad Hilary Clinton is making the situation with American rhetoric. How can America's politicians have such awful foreign relations, and want to make them worse. The dollar has lost value. I think America has lost it's values. What they say and what they do are so inconsistant. I thought Guantanamo was to be closed under the Obama term, now it's going to be upgraded. I think they just want to start more wars so they can employ more people making weapons. War is good for business for some countries.
So much budget used for the military they can't resolve internal problems like healthcare, and social housing. The casualties of war are at home as well as overseas. Waging war impoverishes nations.
The next thing is all the scandal of rigging inter bank interest rates. It's as though the whole system is crumbling. The new 'shard' building opened in London looks like a massive tower of babel. Incongrous with the poverty far below it's exclusive penthouses. Perhaps it will never be occupied and simply be a folly to vanity. I sound pretty depressed realy.
How silly we are not to deal with things on the ground before raising towers of glass into the heavens. I don't know what impression I may have of this building if I were to stand near it and look up. I may feel impoverished rather than inspired by this spire without a church. It does remind me of cathderal spires in a way. This one seems built to glorify itself and it's creators, rather than something beyond ourselves that we look to for stability and continuity.
With more money simply being printed and put into the economy, I am sure this devalues our money. What money we do have anyway. So many people are in dire need, helpless and hopelessly buried under a way of living that pushes more people into poverty. Loss of hope is a dreadful thing to live with.
I hope for better. For real changes to the order of this world, so that everyone regains their dignity. We have been taught to aspire to a standard of living beyond our means and to pay for it out of future wages. The banks seem to have done this, countries, and individuals.
We need some kind of reality that accepts a less materialistic way of life. A change in the paradigm of social and economic equity. Perhaps we just can't afford wars. Perhaps we need to value people's lives. The life we have that is not just based on our function as workers. A sense of self again, that isn't leveraged over and over by the banking structure. It's a house of cards that has fallen down.
Instead of admitting the structural problem of basing a society on indebtedness to purchase freedom in retirement which is now probably untenable for most people, perhaps the social structure needs to become less reliant on borrowing and investment from banks. They are not lending anyway. There must be a way of creating community lending at realistic rates. It seems this is a war of money that has set itself ablaze. Just burning itself out of fuel and in danger of imploding. No wonder the bank of England injects more money into the sys