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The penny drops (control mindsets)

I finally figured out what's going on and why the world seems to be in such a tailspin of late.

When I was a lad (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), we were taught some pretty essential basics.

Such things as how to identify and manage risk, the importance of being a responsible individual and taking responsibility for our own safety and the safety of others, the importance of planning ahead and factoring in contingencies for unexpected events or circumstances.

In short, we were given valuable life-skills that prepared us for a constantly changing and rather challenging world.

To quote the old saying "give a man a fish and he is fed for a day, teach a man to fish and he is fed for a lifetime".

Well things are much different today and in a very, very bad way.

We seem to have swapped the concept of fostering dogged self-reliance and personal responsibility for that of relying on someone else (usually the state) to take care of us.

Instead of teaching our young the importance of all the things that kept us safe and made us good members of society, we seem to have shifted to a world where we encourage reliance on government and its agencies -- not only for our protection but also for forming our opinions and perspectives.

This can be seen in the way that, on an almost daily basis, those governments move to control, regulate or restrict things on the basis that "it's for your own good".

The thing that triggered me today was this BBC story. Apparently it will soon be an offence to be caught with a container of nitrous oxide in your posession. Cake decorators are now criminals and dentists are to be considered drug dealers?

Once again we're seeing the ban-hammer being used as a blunt instrument because we're unwilling to equip people with the knowledge, skills and outlooks needed for them to make their own sensible judgements on such things.

By increasingly ceding their rights to make decisions to "the powers that be", people are increasingly becoming little more than numbers and revenue-generators (by way of taxes) for the machine that is government.

Sorry to bore you all (yet again) but another perfect example of this is they hobby I (and many of others) once enjoyed -- flying toy planes, helicopters and such. For decades, this has been a safe, healthy, educational pursuit that was seen as family-friendly and wholesome. However, now it has been decided for us that the government needs to strictly control and regulate the use of these toys -- allegedly to protect us from ourselves.

Almost every aspect of life is seeing an increasing wave of regulation, restriction and control... all in the name of safety, protection or whatever.

What's more, when something does go wrong, for whatever reasons, it's always someone else's fault. The rationale is that since we are no longer personally responsible for the decisions that are made (that's now government's job), it can't be our fault when bad things happen.

Thus the culture of "victimhood" has formed and grows daily, fueled by the actions of a nanny state that says "follow these new rules/laws and we'll take care of you".

Just like that fisherman, we're being fed on a daily basis and few people now know how to catch their own fish. That leaves the population vulnerable and exposed to the abuses of power that so often occur within the machinery of state.

Things have actually gotten so bad that now the innocent are made to feel guilty by all the virtue-signalling that's going on. If you are one of those who was taught to be self-reliant, responsible and a productive member of society then YOU are now the enemy.

Why do you think that might be?

Could it be that the one thing a government might fear more than anything else is the group of people who are not reliant on it for their daily allocation of fish? For it is these people who are able to think for themselves and have not become addicted to the daily handout. They, and they alone, are the ones who can see what is happening and may be prepared to challenge it.

Now where's my rod and net?

Carpe Diem folks!

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